Tag: 2012 Ebook Challenge

Review: Timeless Sojourn by Jamie Salisbury

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

When one door closes, another door opens. That’s what they say. In Timeless Sojourn by Jamie Salisbury, the door seems to have closed directly on Anne Harrison’s foot, and on her long-term marriage. It opens on a new life.

The step through that door is a bit unsteady at times. In more ways than one.

Anne is in her mid-50s when the story begins. She’s outside the courtroom in rural north Georgia, on the threshold of divorcing her meth-addicted, soon-to-be-ex-husband. Life should be looking up.

Instead she stagnates. The divorce goes through. But the meth catches up with the ex. He only occasionally pays alimony. Anne has surgery and loses most of the toes on one foot. She can’t find a job. The economy sucks.

Her best friend Kat gives her some tough love, and tells her to get the hell out of Dixie and come home to Seattle. Kat has a place for her to live, and Kat’s fiancee Tom has a Administrative Assistant job waiting for her until she gets back on her financial feet.

Not only can you go home again, but things get better when you do. Anne gets out of her rut. What she expected was a chance at a future. Or at least moral support from her best friend.

What she got was a life. Tom didn’t just need an Administrative Assistant. He needed someone to find him a new office, help set up his new business, and do PR. PR is Anne’s specialty. Anne starts taking photographs again, her passion.

And she meets a man who infuriates, aggravates and excites her all at the same time. The only problem with Geoffrey Quinn, besides his arrogance and his amazing good looks, is that he’s in his 30s. He can’t possibly be pursuing Anne. Can he?

The more time they spend together, the deeper their relationship grows. But Anne and Geoff have, not just a lot, but some rather surprising, hurdles to overcome before they can even catch sight of a happily ever after.

Escape Rating B-: “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”, or some cliché like that. In order for any relationship where the partners have a significant age gap, there has to be some kind of life experience equalizer to make the relationship work. Anne is older, but Geoff has graduated the school of hard knocks. Not just his own early divorce, but his sister is HIV-positive, and has been for several years. This is a difficult thing to get right, and it’s one area where the story succeeds.

As the story progresses, the reader is very aware of how Anne feels. This tale is told from her first person point of view, so we’re inside her head. We see what she sees, hear what she hears, and know what she thinks. But we only see her side. Anne’s emotions are crystal clear, but we don’t have the same perspective on Geoff. We know what he says and how he acts, but not why.

In the very early stages of their acquaintance, we know what Anne sees in Geoff. What we don’t know is why he pursues her. It’s a limitation of the first-person POV. He never tells her, and she doesn’t have a chance to overhear it. The reader doesn’t get inside his head, and I, for one, would definitely have appreciated seeing his side of things.

 

Review: Timeless Desire by Gwyn Cready

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

The Urban Dictionary defines an “outlander” as:

Any individual who does not belong in a social setting; an intruder; an interloper

But for readers of time-travel romance, using the subtitle “An Outlander Love Story” as Gwyn Cready does on the cover of Timeless Desire, and specifically setting that romance on the Scottish border in the early 1700s, is bound to invoke comparisons to Jamie Fraser and Clare Randall.

Search Google for “outlander”, and Jamie Fraser’s name comes up as a related search, along with Diana Gabaldon (duh), the unrelated 2007 movie, and the Mitsubishi SUV.

But the heroine of Timeless Desire is Panna Kennedy, not Clare Randall. She’s a librarian and not a nurse. A time-travelling librarian who is the heroine of a romance novel. Okay, I was hooked from the description right there.

Totally incapable of an unbiased opinion, mind you, but completely hooked.

Panna thinks, acts and sounds like “one of us”. Us librarians, I mean. Her budget is being slashed, her staff is under-appreciated, her library is underfunded, and as much as she loves being the head librarian in a small town, occasionally she wants to escape.

Mostly she escapes into a good book. Her husband died two years ago, and she still hasn’t gotten over it. Panna’s spirit of adventure seems to have died with him.

Until she goes searching through the under-basements of the library for something to sell. Something that might keep the budget axe from chopping quite so close to the bone. And she sticks her hand through a locked doorway and into blackness. Not darkness. Blackness like her hand has been cut off, except she can still feel it, she just can’t see it.

She pulls it back like it was on fire. But the fire is back in her soul. She has to see what’s on the other side of that formerly locked door. Was it real? Is she crazy? Why is it there?

There’s a statue in front of the service desk in her library. Colonel John Bridgewater, the founder of the library, or at least the funding angel. (One gets the distinct impression that the statue, albeit fully clothed, is nearly anatomically correct–Panna has certainly fantasized about Bridgewater often enough!)

Panna goes back to the library in the evening and steps through the door into nothingness. She finds herself in the 18th century. What’s more, she’s in England, on the Scots border. She can see Hadrian’s Wall. The library she left behind was in Carlisle, PA. In the USA.

The first person she meets is Colonel John Bridgewater. In the very warm and living flesh. And he thinks she’s a whore. Not to mention a spy. It’s not a very auspicious start to their relationship.

And what a relationship it turns out to be. Nothing on the Scots borders is ever simple. John Bridgewater is the son of two countries. His father is an English Earl and commander of the English forces on the Border. But John was forced to make his own way in the world, because his father neglected to marry his mother, who was the daughter of a Scots clan chief. John’s loyalties are divided.

Each side is sure he must be a traitor. All he wants is peace. Or at least, less pointless bloodshed.

He sees Panna as either an angel or a temptress. John makes Panna feel alive again. But as they drag each other deeper into the tangle of secrets and lies, he discovers that she is telling the truth, and that there is more danger in the knowledge she holds than he ever imagined.

Escape Rating B: There are two ways of looking at this story. One is to attempt to consider how it works on its own merits, and the other is to look at how it deals with the long shadow cast by Diana Gabaldon’s classic tale, Outlander.

Timeless Desire is a solid time-travel romance. Panna’s desperation to solve the budget crisis was very real, and rang true (Been there, done that, and I’ve known too many library folk in that same boat). Her grief over her late husband also “felt” right. Everyone grieves in their own way and time.  Going back in time, while contrived, made for a terrific adventure. It shook Panna out of her rut in every way possible. Fighting for your life will do that. And because the circumstances were extreme, falling in love happened fast and hard.

It was easy to get caught up in Panna’s story.

On the other hand, the title invokes one of the truly great stories, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, and that’s a dangerous comparison to make. Jamie Fraser is positively beloved. The two romance heroes whose names I wouldn’t get near with someone else’s barge-pole are Jamie Fraser and Roarke. Naming another Scots hero Jamie in a time-travel romance is simply bad juju. IMHO.

There were a few too many times when I read a scene in Timeless Desire and knew what was going to happen because either the same thing had happened in Outlander, or it happened before but with an opposite twist. (Spoiler alert) For example, the wedding was in extremely similar circumstances, although Bridgewater was not (thank heavens!) a virgin. The ending worked opposite but had a lot of similar characteristics. In this case it depended on who had a home to go to in which time.

As Outlander-lite, Timeless Desire works very well.

Review: Night of Fire by Nico Rosso

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

The Ether Chronicles is a cooperative steampunk venture, or is that adventure, between writers (and real-life spouses) Zoe Archer and Nico Rosso.

The first book in the series, Skies of Fire, took place in more traditional steampunk territory, assuming there is such a thing as tradition when it comes to a genre as “new-fangled” as steampunk. It’s set on the European side of this alternate, steam- and “ether”-powered world war and it’s written by Ms. Archer, as will be the third book.

Mr. Rosso is responsible for Night of Fire, set in the U.S. West. Less traditional, not just for steampunk, but in general. The West of the late eighteenth century was the frontier, with wide-open spaces and people who didn’t want to be hemmed in.

There’s a war going on, and men are called away from their homes to fight against the Hapsburg enemy. Just as happened in real history, particularly in World War II, when the men are called away in large numbers, women fill roles that used to be reserved for men. And some of them find that their new roles suit them much better than the ones they would have traditionally found.

And some men think that this new assertiveness fits those women better than the old traditional roles ever did.

The  Army has also given Tom Knox a new role in life. In Thornville, he was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. The US Army has made him not just a soldier, but a leader. It’s given him purpose and responsibility. The Army doesn’t care where he came from, only how he conducts himself. And he’s not a boy any more.

The war has brought him near enough to Thornville to visit. To find out what happened to the girl he left behind. Rosa Campos’ father ran him out of town, said Tom wasn’t good enough for his daughter. And he was right, then.

Now is different.

Now, Rosa is the Sheriff of Thornville. She’s the only one man enough for the job, in spite of her father’s protests. The first thing Tom sees when he rides back into town on his ether-powered “horse” is Rosa fighting off a band of roughnecks, who aren’t just hooligans testing the “lady lawman”.

They’re the front for a completely different threat, one that’s going to literally gobble up the entire town, if Tom and Rosa don’t set aside three years of simmering resentments and disappointments and face the threat together, instead of fighting each other.

About that simmering…the fire they sparked between them before Tom left still burns as hot as ever, but they can’t afford the distraction. Distraction will get them, and everyone around them killed.

But once they defeat their mutual enemy, if they survive, can they find any feelings left for each other beyond lust, disappointment and pain? Did they lose their chance at happiness by not fighting for it hard enough, all those years ago?

Escape Rating A-: There are three stories going on in Night of Fire, and all of them are terrific. One is the war, and for background on the war with the Hapsburgs, read Skies of Fire by Zoe Archer first. It’s tremendous fun, especially if you love steampunk. The information on what ether and telumium (the mineral that makes it all possible) are is there.

The second story is the Western “save the town” story. The sheriff needs to fight off the evil mining corporation that planning to swallow up the good ranching land and the good ranching community. This tale stands the usual trope on its head by having the corporation plan to literally swallow the town. Only in SF or fantasy (or one of their cousins like steampunk)!

Third, of course, is the romance. Tom and Rosa are doing the second-chance dance. They loved before and war has given them another try. They’ve grown up; they weren’t the people they were before. They didn’t fight hard enough before, they weren’t ready. This time, the stakes are much, much higher, but they’re much stronger. But they’ve got a lot of internal resentments to overcome, as well as the obvious external forces arrayed against them. It’s one hell of a fight.

And I wish the story had been a bit longer. This was an awful lot of stuff to pack into 100 pages. I loved it. I would have loved it more had there been a little more of it. Which means I can’t wait for the next one.

 

Review: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns by Margaret Dilloway

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

The “rose” who requires rather careful care and handling in this women’s fiction novel by Margaret Dilloway is Gal Garner, and she very definitely has thorns. But just like the flowers that she nurtures so carefully, there are definitely rewards for navigating your way through Gal’s prickly, thorny life.

You can learn a lot about actual rose gardening while reading The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, or at least, rose breeding and rose gardening in Southern California. Because that’s where this book takes place. There are snippets (how appropriate) from rose care books at the head of each chapter, and they seem totally real.

Gal Garner certainly needs care, and lots of it. Perhaps even more care than the roses she breeds so painstakingly.

Gal is 36. She has been a kidney dialysis patient for ten very long years. She’s had two transplants and both have failed. Her life has been defined by a childhood illness that was not caught in time, one that destroyed both her kidneys. Her world has been defined by the limitations of her disease.

And not just her world, but also her parents, and her older sister Becky. The family drama will play out again, one more summer, against a real rose, not rose-colored, backdrop.

Ten years is a long time for a dialysis patient. Gal is on borrowed time. She needs a kidney. Her mother has already given one. The rest of her family are not an option.

Gal is a biology teacher at a private high school. She is painstaking, smart, witty, acerbic. She suffers no fools because she has no patience and no time. She most explicitly does not grade on the curve. Her students learn or they fail. Their parents want her gone. Her life is closing in.

All she has are the roses she breeds. Her goal is one rose, a rare Hulthemia, that she can get voted into the All-America Rose Selections. A successful test rose would be worth a fortune. She could stop teaching.

But instead of a successful test rose, in the spring she gets her teenage niece as a house guest. Her sister Becky has become irresponsible. Again. Becky has left for Hong Kong. Supposedly for work. And sent Riley to her Aunt Gal for months, with no warning. And with no thought as to whether Gal can handle a 15-year-old girl.

Gal can’t turn her away. Riley is her family, even if she hasn’t seen her since she was three.

And even if she looks just like her mother. Gal’s sister Becky, whom Gal is still angry with. Angry for her irresponsibility. Angry with for just being healthy. Angry with for just being able to have a child, and then for throwing her away.

Riley has raised herself. Becky has never been responsible. Gal feels guilty that she didn’t do more, all those years ago. So she tries now. But they are both set in their ways.

Riley isn’t a child any more. She’s almost a woman. And Gal spends every other night in the hospital having dialysis. But needing each other is more than either of them has ever had.

Roses grow towards the sun.

Escape Rating B+: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns was a little slow to get started. At first, Gal is not a likable character. On the one hand, the reader sympathizes with her because of her illness, but on the other hand, she makes herself as unpleasant as possible to everyone around her. She’s so busy making sure that no one feels sorry for her she acts like a jerk, knowing they can’t retaliate because of her illness.

The women’s intergenerational drama is one that’s been done before. Gal’s illness dominated the family dynamic, so Becky felt left out and acted out. What was interesting, and what makes the story work, was the way that things played out in the next generation. Even though Riley looks like Becky, Gal doesn’t visit her mother’s sins on her. Nor does she treat her like a child after a few false starts. Gal needs her too much.

Their need for each other makes them forge a totally different dynamic, a better one than the sisters had. It works.  There is a happy ending of sorts, but not a huge one. And that’s the way it should be.

***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  The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns on the BlogHer Book Club, you can join the discussion by following this link to the Book Club.

Review: The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

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

The Chaperone is not quite a story about Louise Brooks, although she’s the device that makes the whole thing possible. So what is it?

It’s a fictionalized account of something that might have been, a journey that the now-legendary 1920s film actress might have taken to New York to audition for the famous Denishawn modern dance company in 1922. Brooks did join Denishawn that year. She was 15.

But young girls from Cherryvale, Kansas (transplanted to Wichita for the purpose of the story) did not spend summers in New York City on their own in 1922, no matter how mature and precocious they might be. And no matter how neglectful their fathers were and how determined their mothers might be to leave them to raise themselves. Sending Louise off alone just wouldn’t have been done.

Enter the fictional character of Cora Carlisle. A married woman willing to spend a summer in New York at the Brooks’ expense, chaperoning the Brooks’ incredibly willful daughter, all for the excuse to explore her own hidden past.

The title of the story is The Chaperone because it is Cora’s journey that we follow, not Louise’s. And what a journey it is.

When we first meet Cora, she seems like a staid, middle-class matron. A woman who has settled in to her boring and predictable little life, and who fears the modernity embodied by Louise (picture at right from Wikimedia Commons), who symbolized with her bobbed hair and very relaxed morals the flapper and the Jazz Age.

But Cora goes to New York to confront her past. She was one of the forced by lucky participants in a great social experiment of an earlier generation; Cora was one of the orphans who was sent West on the Orphan Trains. She intends to go to the orphanage that she came from, and search for her own records. She wants to know her roots. Her adoptive parents were good to her, but they are long dead. The past can’t touch them. But it might help her.

The future is what she finds. Louise may be taking dancing lessons, but it’s what she teaches Cora that matters. She opens up the world of the big city, and a window into the way that the world will be. As Louise’s chaperone, she goes to shows that she wouldn’t have seen, places she wouldn’t have visited. The world is bigger than Wichita. And what happens in New York, can stay in New York.

But Cora has a secret back home, too. Her marriage is not what it appears to be. Just as Louise’s privileged childhood is not what it appears to be. But living with Louise has taught Cora that if you maintain the appearance of things, what happens behind closed doors can be very different from the world sees.

Cora can have her private happiness if she is willing to reach outside of her moral corset and grab for it with both hands. Louise was never that lucky.

Escape Rating A-: Louise Brooks’ history is known, but Cora Carlisle’s fictional existence is woven so seamlessly into her biography that I had to check it again to make sure that she didn’t exist. The meld of fact and fiction was almost picture perfect.

At the beginning of the story, there’s a big dose of “why are we here?” going on in the reader’s head. Or at least this reader. Louise is not a sympathetic character. She is self-centered and self-absorbed to the point where it’s no wonder her mother wants to send her off with someone else for the summer. And Cora is, to use a word suited to the time, a prig. The hook was getting into Cora’s head about why she wants to go on this trip.

But there’s also a little mystery. Cora doesn’t ask her husband’s permission to go to New York; she tells him she’s going. That just wasn’t done in 1922. Either she’s very liberated, and her other interactions don’t bear that out, or there’s something unusual in her marriage, which turns out to be the case.

The 20s were a fascinating time, and Cora managed to be in the right place at the right time to see a lot of things that foreshadowed later historic events. She grows up a LOT during that summer, much more than Louise, which is what makes the story. Louise should be the one growing up, but Louise is already much older than she should be. Unfortunately so. Cora is the one who “gets a life” that summer.

Louise is the tragic figure. She’s already fallen, she just doesn’t know it yet. Cora, the older woman, is the larva who will break out of her cocoon and become a butterfly.

***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  The Chaperone on the BlogHer Book Club, you can join the discussion by following this link to the Book Club.

 

Review: Rogue’s Pawn by Jeffe Kennedy

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

Rogue’s Pawn by Jeffe Kennedy is part of an interesting and fascinating sub-branch of urban fantasy. I call it crossover fantasy, where someone from our reality literally “crosses over” to another reality where magic works.

But just because magical powers are made manifest, doesn’t mean that the person suddenly manifesting them has a magically good time in whatever place he or she has found herself in. Magic can be both wondrous and terrible.

As the story opens, we don’t even know her name. But we’re in her head. And we know that she’s finally gotten fed up with her boring fiance and her academic/scientific job in the middle of a party where Clive (the truly boring fiance, she should have ditched him long ago) has belittled her for the last time. But in walking out, she follows a compulsion to go to nearby Devil’s Tower (Wyoming, iconic scene of Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and enact a very strange ritual.

She winds up in Fae, with the ability to wish things into being, and no idea how she got there. Compulsions to enact rituals don’t really figure into her calculations.

She’s attacked by a huge black dog, and captured by the fae. She wakes up in extreme agony, her throat nearly torn out. From there, she discovers that she has terrible magic powers, and zero control.

She truly does think things into being. And she has no mental controls at all. As far as the fae are concerned, she is a dangerous weapon that should be eliminated immediately. But the man who has rescued her wants her trained for war. He believes she is a weapon that can be used, with the proper conditioning.

His name is Rogue. She is chained within his castle. She is his pawn, his property. If he saves her life, she owes him.

Everything in fae is negotiable. Life, death, power, souls. Eternity can be bargained away. A person is only worth the price they can negotiate. Rogue has saved her because he wants something from her, but she doesn’t know what that might be.

She doesn’t know anything. From being an academic with knowledge at her fingertips, she has been thrust into a situation in which she has no information except what she can gain through negotiation.

She doesn’t even have her own name. Rogue calls her Gwynn. It is close, but not quite. And for the damage she caused in her first flush of power and lack of knowledge, he negotiates her use as a weapon in the war. She will be trained by utter sadists, but she cannot be permanently damaged. And she cannot be raped. Because Rogue has the rights to her firstborn child in return for saving her life.

Confused? So is Gwynn. She has lost everything, even her identify. She must remake herself in this strange new place where she has no friends, only enemies. And where she has power she must learn to control. She has to become more than just Rogue’s Pawn.

Escape Rating B: Gwynn’s voice is snarktastically terrific. Which is a great thing, because we see the entire world of Rogue’s Pawn through her first-person viewpoint. We only know what she knows and see what she sees. Her sarcasm is hilarious, but, because Gwynn is such a complete fish-out-of water, her knowledge is limited and adds to the reader’s confusion. I think I might have enjoyed the story more if I’d been less confused.

Gwynn’s lack of information is necessary to the story. I’m less certain that the reader’s total blindness is.

The training Gwynn undergoes to become a sorceress for the war effort is unquestionably torture, and equally unquestionably sadistic. Some desperate measure were definitely required to save Gwynn’s life by training her magic. She absolutely had to learn to make her mind a blank. Whether this was the only way, and how much of a betrayal it was, and how Rogue felt about it, etc., is one of those things that a different form of narration might have helped with.

Rogue’s motives and thoughts are difficult to fathom for a large part of the story. Gwynn simply doesn’t know enough about this world to have any handle on him. And we filter through her. Although we do finally get the big picture at the end. It’s the smaller pictures, like the war (hard to believe that’s the smaller picture, isn’t it?) that I’d love some explanation for.

And I truly wish I understood about Titania. Hopefully, I’ll find out lots more in the next books in the Covenant of Thorns series. Please?

Review: The Delphi Bloodline by Donna Del Oro

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

The Delphi Bloodline by Donna Del Oro sucked me in from the very first page. There were a few points in the middle where I wondered, “Sucked me into what?”, but I couldn’t stop flicking the pages on my iPad. I absolutely had to know what happened next. The Delphi Bloodline is a little bit paranormal romance, a little bit romantic suspense, a little bit thriller, and there were a couple of moments where I thought I’d wandered into The DaVinci Code, but all of it will keep up long past your bedtime.

It all starts when Athena Butler has a dream that her mother is being kidnapped. Except that it’s not exactly a dream; it’s a vision in what Athena and her mother call “The Flow”, the stream of spirits. And Flow Dreams are prophesies –unless they are thwarted. Or misinterpreted.

Athena and her mother Annabella both have precognitive visions, and they both work with the police to help solve crimes. Or rather, Athena’s mother still does. Athena used to, but she’s been hiding out, somewhere that no one can find her. Even her mother only has a cell phone number.

Athena is tired of seeing death. Because that’s all the future holds.

But when even Athena’s warning turns out not to be enough to stop her mother’s kidnapping, Athena comes out of hiding. Or rather, her mother’s failsafe plan to protect Athena if something happened to her kicks into place.

A Guardian comes for Athena. Guardian with a capital “G”. And just in time. Someone is hunting every identified psychic. Every person who has ever assisted the police or any law enforcement agency using any type of extra-sensory powers.

And all the fakes are turning up dead.

Athena, and her mother, are descendants of a long line of women who have psychic abilities, all the way back to ancient Greece. There’s always been an Athena in her family. And there have always been Guardians willing to lay down their lives to keep women like Athena safe from people who wanted to harm them.

Keriakos Alexander Skoros (Kas to his friends) doesn’t plan to be Athena’s Guardian on anything other than a temporary basis. But her mother entrusted him with this task, and so, for that matter, did his own mother, another one of these psychics. But when it turns out that all the psychics in the U.S. are being targeted, Athena, her mother, his mother, all the others, Kas, a former cop, is on board for the duration.

But the longer he spends with Athena, the more he wants to take up the role of her protector, forever.

Athena doesn’t want anyone vowing to lay down his life for her. She’ll protect herself, thank you very much. She’s looked at the statistics, and she knows that Guardians generally die young. The longer she spends with Kas, the less she wants him to be her Guardian.

Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t want him around.

The FBI does not believe in psychic powers. But they do believe in serial killers. They don’t believe one little bit that Athena has any power whatsoever, but they can figure out that she’s one of the targets. Eventually.

They think she’s the perfect bait to trap the kidnapper.

Athena was worried that Guardians have a short life expectancy? The life expectancy of bait really sucks.

Escape Rating A-: The suspense aspects of this one are like the snowball going down the hill. Once it starts rolling, it never stops. The pace just gets faster and faster. Everyone involved becomes part of the action, which just gets more and more tense. Wow!

The romance takes its time to develop. It should be the wrong time for Kas and Athena. But they are so right for each other, if events can just slow down long enough for them to figure it out.

The big-bad villain may have been a bit over-the-top. Your mileage may vary. Believable villains seem to be difficult. The one element that really bugged me was Annabelle, Athena’s mother, and her long-standing relationship with, of all agencies, the Vatican. Would the Pope be using a psychic to predict when it was safe to travel? There’s more going on there, but it heads into spoiler country.

But if you’re looking for a fun mostly romantic suspense with a touch of psychic power, give The Delphi Bloodline a read. Be prepared not to re-surface until you’re done.

 

Review: The Dressmaker’s Dilemma by Theresa Stillwagon

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

The second book in Theresa Stillwagon’s Winter Creek, Montana Series is more ghostly, more suspenseful, more dangerous, and therefore, more fun. This one is definitely a three-hankie special, both in the historic parts, and in the here-and-now.

The Dressmaker’s Dilemma in that she wants the cowboy, but not the ready-made family that comes along with him. And, as seems to be the norm in Winter Creek, the ghosts have decided that the modern-day humans are much, much better off if they right whatever wrongs happened in the past.

After all, the ghosts got it wrong the first time. So they know enough not to get it wrong the second time. Or not wrong the same way.

Barb Grant is the dressmaker for the re-enactment. She’s responsible for making all the costumes for this living history ghost town. But Barb has a few “ghosts” of her own. Memories that made her “run away” from her old life to the remote town of Winter Creek.

Wyatt Campbell is the cowboy. He didn’t know his divorced wife had their daughter. Without warning, she’s dead and he’s a single father.

Whatever is in Barb’s past makes Wyatt’s instant fatherhood seem irresponsible, and she wants no part of it. But she still wants the man. And he’s always wanted her. He’s just been way too slow about staking his claim.

His pre-teen daughter wants a mother. Jaime thinks that she, Wyatt, and Barb make a perfect family. And the ghosts think that they right a wrong, somewhere back in the past.

Meanwhile, someone wants to destroy the town, right now. The ghosts want to stop that. Because it’s all happened before. And they don’t want it to happen again. Too many people have already shed their blood for the secrets the town holds. And the ghosts think that enough is more than enough.

Escape Rating B+: The more the ghosts get involved, the more suspenseful and fascinating the story gets. I’m enjoying the way the past and the present are intertwining as more and more secrets get revealed. Each love story gets resolved within one book, but there’s and overall story about the town’s past that just keeps getting more fascinating.

I can’t wait for the next chapter. Oops, I meant book.

Review: Forgotten Memories by Theresa Stillwagon

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

Ghost towns are such fascinating places. Even more when they get turned into living history museums. In the hands of a talented storyteller, the tales of parallel lives filtered through the shades of the past, and the light of the present, can make for quite haunting reading.

So we begin the Winter Creek, Montana Series by Theresa Stillwagon, starting with Forgotten Memories.

Jen Ferguson is both a history professor and a psychic, which makes for a pretty interesting combination when it comes to rebuilding a ghost town. She can see the ghosts. And she has studied the history of the area.

Too bad it’s her experience in the present that causing her the most trouble. The revival of Winter Creek is really her baby, her pet project. She knows the area.

But an impetuous affair with a hot-shot historian has tarnished her professional credentials, throwing all of her hard work in question. In the halls of academe, when an affair ends, the man always comes out ahead, no matter how big a jerk he is.

Jen is forced to act like an Old West schoolmarm to save her academic reputation, even though the man she broke up with is telling lies about their supposed engagement. He’s the one with the big list of publications. She’s still just a local girl.

Too bad the building at Winter Creek that she’s rehabbing for the college is the town saloon, and that one of the late “good-time gals” is sending her messages. Telling her that the hot new rancher riding through town, Adam Craine, is just the man to show her that not all men are jerks.

Adam’s also the spitting image of a former Winter Creek resident. Adam and Jen are part of a century-old mystery, one that the ghost wants to help them solve – before old grudges take more lives in the here and now.

Escape Rating B: I absolutely love living history museums, which is what initially attracted me to this series. The romance between Adam and Jen is plenty hot and sparky, and it’s doubly fascinating as it plays out across two time-periods, because it’s not just the present, but the ghosts also get involved. Adam and Jen wait to be sure they are acting on their own desires, and not re-enacting someone else’s. Very hot and very emotionally well done.

The element that kept this from being a B+ or A was the way Jen was treated by the College and “The Jerk”, and even her grandfather, regarding her personal life. This is the 21st century, not the 1950’s. While there is still a double-standard in many ways, Jen’s treatment seemed exaggerated, considering that both parties were single. I understand why she wouldn’t trust another man. I didn’t understand her employer’s reaction to the aftermath of the relationship, especially since most of it happened before the Jerk was employed at her college and they were not in a supervisory relationship.

Review: The Seduction of Phaeton Black by Jillian Stone

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

The Seduction of Phaeton Black is just that, an extremely seductive story. And not just for the steamy sex. What seduces about Jillian Stone’s first foray into this cross between paranormal and steampunk is the way in which she mixes the darkly decadent underbelly of London during what we think of as the prim and proper Victorian era with evil spirits, misplaced Egyptian gods, and steam-powered wonders.

And the very, steamy sex. Lots of it.

Phaeton Black begins the story as a discredited Special Agent for Scotland Yard. In other words, he’s been recently sacked. His theory about the Ripper was discredited. He believed Jack was a blood-thirsty spirit. The Yard was certain Jack’s motives were more, well, earthly.

Phaeton was right, but there wasn’t any way the Yard could acknowledge that fact. And too many of Phaeton’s fellow officers didn’t want to. He’s generally right, and generally insufferable about it. He’s also seen a few too many uncanny things, and not always been able to cover it up.

Being able to investigate the paranormal makes those whose viewpoints are rooted in the here and now a bit nervous.

So does Phaeton’s marked fondness for absinthe. The Yard chalks his report about the Ripper being a hungry spirit up to the “green fairy”, and gives him the sack. When another problem outside the ordinary raises its ghostly head, the Yard drags him out from the hole he crawled into.

His new apartment in the basement of a brothel. Typical Phaeton.

The heroine of this adventure is America Jones, half-Cajun witch, in search of the pirate who stole her father’s shipping company. She needs Phaeton to help her steal it back. Legally this time.

With the powers from the witchy side of her heritage, America turns out to be the bait that Phaeton needs to entrap the hungry spirit the Yard has sent him after.

Ms. Jones wants Phaeton’s connections to the Yard to help her bring down the pirates, and protect her while she hunts them. And while they hunt her.

Their plan is to use each other to achieve their mutual aims. And then walk away. He’ll catch his killer. She’ll get her company back. If they manage to enjoy each other along the way, that’s just a way to pass the time.

Phaeton Black has never known what love is. Not in any form. He certainly doesn’t expect that this American chit he intends to use is going to teach him.

Or that she will be his salvation.

Escape Rating B+: The world that Jillian Stone has created in The Seduction of Phaeton Black is a seduction all by itself. Phaeton Black is one of those especially debauched anti-heroes who hides everything he feels behind a facade of worldly charm and flippant, often rude, remarks.

He acts like a user of everyone and everything around him. But it IS mostly an act. A coping mechanism.

America Jones is also coping. She’s lost everything she every knew, and using Phaeton Black is the only way she thinks she can get it back. And survive.

The spirit world is using both of them. The Egyptian gods are haunting London. Why not? Why shouldn’t one or more of them have been transported along with Cleopatra’s Needle and all the other ancient relics the British “liberated” (read that as looted) from Egypt. what a marvelous plot-twist!

The Egyptian gods need an assist to get back home. But gods don’t request help, they demand it.

The story was fantastic. Both literally and figuratively. Steam power, Egyptian gods, spirits, familiars, and Jack the Ripper. And pirates added for spice. What a ride! Including airships.

The way that Phaeton and America use each other, yet resist their mutual pull towards any emotional attachment, draws the reader towards their story just as they are drawn towards each other.

Phaeton’s and America’s story continues in The Moonstone and Miss Jones. It needs to continue. I can’t wait to read the next book. It looks like there are many adventures ahead.