Tag: Carina Press

Ebook Review Central for Carina Press for October 2011

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Ebook Review Central

We’re back! It’s November, and it’s time to take a look at the Carina Press titles for October 2011.

And let’s not forget those September titles! As promised, the September list has been updated to add new reviews since the first issue was published.  For the books that came out late in the month, or had big blog tours in October, like Elyse Mady’s Something so Right, there were lots of reviews added.

But we’re here for the October titles. And October had some big hits among the 19 titles that Carina Press published during the month.

There were way more contenders for the featured title slots this month. There was significantly more reviewing activity to evaluate, for which I want to give a hearty thank you to my fellow book reviewers.  Now on to the featured titles!

Falke’s Captive, part of the Puma Nights series by Anna Leigh Keaton and Madison Layle, was one of three erotica titles from Carina that received 10 or more reviews this month. What sets this story of a female graduate student finding fulfillment with two mountain lion shapeshifter brothers apart from the others was the consistently positive tone to all of the reviews for this book. To quote the Library Journal review, “authors Layle and Keaton craft a balanced tale rife with the requisite romance, eroticism, and fantastical.” This one sounds like not just good erotica, but also a darn good story.

Val’s Rancher by Debra Kayn is the second featured book. This is part of her Sisters of MacDougal Ranch series, and if the first book, Chantilly’s Cowboy, is as good as this one, she’ll win some fans. Val’s Rancher is a story about learning to live with heartbreak, and about finding ways to trust again when your world is falling apart. This is a “coming back to your first love” story, and there are never enough good ones of those. The review at A Snarky Space, which in this case is not snarky at all, is enough to make anyone fall in love with this one.

My last featured book is a biggie. Because it’s four books in one. Carina and C.J. Barry have brought back her incredible science fiction romance series, Unforgettable, and made them available in ebooks. They were well-reviewed when they were originally published and are getting a whole new crop of great reviews now that they are back. If you like science fiction romance, these look like a must read. In order, the Unforgettable series is: 1)Unearthed, 2)Unraveled, 3)Unleashed and 4)Unmasked. Drea at Judging the Book by its Pages has written excellent reviews for the entire series.

Next week, after we’ve all slept off our post-Thanksgiving turkey comas, Ebook Review Central will return with a look at Dreamspinner Press’ October titles.

Ebook Review Central for Carina Press September 2011

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> Ebook Review Central> ebooks

This issue of Ebook Review Central is your guide to the Carina Press titles for September 2011.

Carina published 19 titles in September! For each title, I’ve listed the usual basic info, the title, author, if it’s in a series, suggested category listings from the publisher, the retail price and the ISBN so you can buy it from your favorite ebook pusher. Oops, I meant supplier. No, I meant seller. (If ebooks are your drug of choice, you know already what I mean).

There’s a cover picture, only going to show that we do judge books by their covers.

Following the basic info, there’s the all important grid of review links as of yesterday, 10/23/11. The grid includes the name of the reviewer (if the site provided a name), the name of the site, a link to the actual review, and the grade or rating if one was given.

Grades and ratings generally come in two flavors. Some reviewers grade on the letter scale, A through F. A is great, F is awful, just like in school. Some things never change.  Others rate on a numeric scale, usually but not always 1-5 with 5 being fantastic. Those ratings are represented as 3/5 or 4/5, meaning a rating of 3 on a scale of 5 or  4 on a scale of 5. Occasionally, a rating will defy reduction to either a letter or numeric rank. Those will be posted verbatim.

This first time, and in future issues,  I plan to feature two or three books, based on the reviews and ratings of my fellow book bloggers. These are the books most buzzed about from the publisher listed in the past month.

For the Carina September titles these are the books with the most buzz:

Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas not only received 8 reviews, but those reviews were almost all positive to the max. Also, Romantic Times (otherwise known as RT Book Reviews) doesn’t review a lot of ebooks, so when they do review one, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. The reviewers describe this as a tempting read for those Urban Fantasy fans out there.

 

 

My second pick is Redemption by Eleri Stone.

There are a lot of excellent reviews, one as recent as this weekend, so word is still going around. This looks like a good book for those who like shapeshifter romances, and that’s a pretty big audience!

 

Last, but certainly not least, a romantic suspense title. Deadly Descent by Kaylea Cross has been reviewed all over the blogosphere so far, everywhere from Dear Author to Smexy Books to the Maldivian Book Reviewer. This romantic suspense title will particularly appeal to those who like to see some military action.

 

 

That’s all for this week. Please come back next Monday for the Dreamspinner Press September review roundup.

Introducing Ebook Review Central

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> Ebook Review Central> ebooks

So what is “Ebook Review Central“? I’m so glad you asked.

Every Monday, Ebook Review Central will publish a list of all the ebooks published by a particular publisher the previous month, with links to all the published reviews.  Today’s first issue contains all the Carina Press titles for September 2011, along with links to all the reviews as of Sunday, 10/23/11.

In the upcoming weeks I will do the same thing for Dreamspinner Press and Samhain Publishing. I would be interested in hearing from you, the readers, your suggestions for which publisher or publishers to include for week 4. After the 4th week, I’ll cycle around to Carina’s October titles, and back through Dreamspinner and Samhain and “the player to be named later” again.

Why am I doing this? People decide what books to buy based on browsing at a bookstore or recommendations. Ebook-only books can’t be browsed in a bookstore, so we all blog to create more recommendations when we like a book. But each of us blogs about the books we like, and it’s fantastic.

But, when a reader is undecided, where do they go? Amazon or Goodreads, and not all of us post our reviews there. Sometimes none of us. And that debate is for another post someday. Yet an ebook may have tons of reviews.

Also, I’m a librarian by training. Librarians need a place where they can find reviews of ebooks, just like they do print books.  Their budgets are tight. They want to add ebooks from ebook-only publishers, but if they can only buy 3 or 5 Carina Press titles this month and 3 or 5 Dreamspinner titles this month, there is no place to go to find which ones were the best. Ebook Review Central will be that place.

A question that will be asked, because I had to ask myself when I created this, is why the one month delay? Why am I only publishing the September titles now, when it’s already mid-October?

It takes about a month for the blogosphere to generate reviews for all the titles. I wanted to put up last week’s titles this week, but when I started my research, half the titles weren’t reviewed yet.  When I looked at last month’s titles, almost everything had a review someplace. That won’t always be 100% true, but at least it turns out to be a reasonable way to bet.

One other note: Amazon and Goodreads will not be listed as review sources unless that was the only thing I could find.

If you have suggestions, let me know. If you find this useful, definitely let me know. I will update published lists, so if later reviews are published, or if you have a review that should be listed but I missed (Google is good, but it is not perfect), send email to marlene@readingreality.net.

Goddess with a Blade

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

Vampire politics and sex. If that had been the sum total of Goddess with a Blade, Lauren Dane‘s latest book from Carina Press, it would still have been a fun read. But the story turned out to be a bit deeper than I expected, and that made it even better.

The Goddess named in the title is the Celtic Goddess Brigid. Her physical vessel is Rowan Summerwaite. Rowan is also, coincidentally, the licensed vampire hunter for the Las Vegas region. To complicate matters further, Rowan was raised by the leader of the Vampire Nation. And, there’s a new Vampire Scion in Las Vegas, and he and Rowan are starting their naturally adversarial relationship off on the wrong foot. She killed his predecessor very, very righteously, for not keeping his “people” in line. That’s her job.

But there’s a serial killer in town. A vampire who doesn’t care if he exposes the vamps and all of the other kindred to curious mortal world that hasn’t yet figured out they exist. All he wants is his next victim, and his next fix, after over 600 years of immortal ennui. Meanwhile, Rowan and the new Scion, Clive, try to negotiate whether their business relationship will turn out to be frenemies, frenemies with benefits, or something more.

Escape Rating A: I had a great time with this story, and these characters. Rowan’s relationships with all the people around her just kept drawing me in. Her love/hate/love thing with her foster father, who is, after all, the head honcho vampire, is a heart breaker. She kills rogue vampires for a living, and he trained her, and he is one, and he knew this is what she would become, and wow!

I want to see more stories in this world. It was a cool place to visit. And I want to find out if the romance between Clive and Rowan works out. And if Rowan’s cop friend ever gets his act together. As I said, I really liked these people, I want to see how they go.

Cougars in romance

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

I received my first NetGalley egalley for review yesterday. I was excited even before I read the book, just to receive the notification. I had requested a romance from Carina Press and I will confess to a certain amount of curiosity just to see whether or not I would get the book. This is a book I requested on my own, not one I’m reviewing for Library Journal.

NetGalley is a service that allows publishers to make their electronic galleys available to librarians, reviewers and bloggers ahead of publications, so that folks who will review and hopefully say good things have a chance to get the word out before the book comes out. Making electronic galleys has to be the wave of the future, even for print books.

However, Carina Press is the electronic-only “imprint” of Harlequin. Harlequin has been very forward-thinking when it comes to ebooks. Everything they publish in print is available as an ebook, and always at a slightly lower price than the print version. Whether what they publish is to an individual person’s taste or not, well, that is what the acronym YMMV is all about. But the business model is definitely worthy of note. Harlequin also publishes some extremely good fantasy and urban fantasy under their Luna imprint. But I digress.

Carina Press has just celebrated their one year anniversary. I have purchased some of their books. They generally make wonderful “mind-candy”. They’re not deep, but they are fun.

So, on to Lessons in Indiscretion, by Karen Erickson. The story is set in the Regency period, but this is certainly not an old-fashioned Regency! Widowed Lady Julia has decided to take a lover, and has set her sights on a younger man, the Earl of Bedingfield, who has been a family friend since he was 14. Now he is 26, and her husband is dead and she is out of her widow’s weeds. While Lady Julia nearly scandalizes herself by her desire for the younger earl, she is surprised to discover that he is just as interested in a liaison with her!  She believes that, due to the difference in their ages and stations (he is very wealthy, she is not) that he will be tired of her in a short period of time. He, of course, being the hero, finds himself enchanted and surprised by his possessiveness. Their secret affair brings out the sparkle that she never had, and other men find her both interesting and desirable.

I wanted the story to be longer. There just wasn’t enough of it. Everything happened in less than 50 pages. One lunch and it was over <sniff>. I could have stood just a little more plot. But for something to while away an hour, it was good fun.

This is not the first older woman/younger man romance Carina Press has published or the first one I have read. Stroke of Midnight, by Bonnie Edwards, is a contemporary romance with the same theme, also published by Carina. For something that has more depth, Laura Leone’s Fallen from Grace has just been released as ebook. Fallen from Grace won the RITA award for Best Contemporary Romance the year it came out, and it has been on a number of “best romance” lists, but the print version has been very hard to find for years. It also deals with an older woman/younger man romance, but there are a lot of darker issues involved with the story. Laura Leone also writes Science Fiction and Urban Fantasy under the name Laura Resnick.

A post earlier this month on the Dear Author blog commented that “Older women-younger men must be the new vampires…” because the commenter was finding the theme so prevalent. Searching for recent titles, I don’t think it’s that common, but particularly since Demi Moore threw Bruce Willis over for Ashton, the Cougar story has become a recurring theme in romance fiction. And personally, I think Demi traded down.