Blackbirds (Miriam Black, #1) – Book Review

Published Date: April 22, 2012

Publishing Co.: Angry Robot

Pages: 381

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

If you touch Miriam Black, skin to skin, for even a second, she can see your death. The exact year, day, hour and manner of how you die. Just the one vision, one time, but she never forgets. Miriam doesn’t try to change fate. She tried that once upon a time and it doesn’t work. She hangs around like a vulture, waiting for you to die. Then, she takes the earthly things you don’t need any longer; money, credit cards, etc. She crowns herself a scavenger and she accepts her lot in life.

Until she foresees a death that is a direct result from the person knowing her. Finally, something shakes her from her complacency. She doesn’t like the idea of someone dying because they know her, but she can’t change fate, right?

Miriam isn’t a very likable character. I can enjoy a good anti-hero, but she just doesn’t have very many redeeming qualities, at least until the end. The actual villains were quite good. Creepy, intimidating. Running from them made sense.

There were a few very Stephen King elements to this book. I should have written them down when I thought of it, but I was too confident in my memory. I do remember that it was so glaringly similar that it almost felt like a complete duplication.

Currently, I am undecided whether I will continue this series.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism – Book Review

Published Date: May 17, 2016

Publishing Co.: Quirk Books

Pages: 330

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Well, this book certainly did not make me miss high school. Teenagers are just too much drama and make so many dumb decisions. I know, once upon a time, I was one. I don’t miss those days unlike a lot of people. This is part of the reason why I don’t read YA all too often, I get all grouchy about the young idiots.

Gretchen and Abby are accidental BFFs. Gretchen was forced to come to Abby’s birthday party by her parents and when no one else showed up, a very rude Abby managed to make a best friend while being very rude. I for one, would have said peace out to this beast and went home. But Gretchen is a better person than I am and saw someone in pain and tried to help them.

Fast forward several years to high school, they’re still inseparable. However, a strange night at the lake ends with Gretchen missing in the woods and when she is finally found, she’s not the normal Gretchen. As months go by, her hygiene declines, she starts fights with everyone and she is scribbling creepy things in her notebook.

My one major issue with this book is, we never find out just HOW Gretchen gets possessed by a demon. There isn’t a demonic backstory. This demon was just hanging out in the water/woods, waiting to possess someone?

The ending is DEPRESSING. Mostly, because I cannot imagine having the kind of friendship they end up having, with my BFF. I know it’s realistic which makes it all the more sad.

The moral of the story here is; don’t let your BFF jump off the end of a dock without you. If someone is getting possessed, you might as well bring chaos down on those around you TOGETHER. Twice the possession, twice the fun.

Thank you Melanie at Grab the Lapels for the book. ❤

Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim #1) – Book Review

Published Date: July 21, 2009

Publishing Co.: Harper Voyager

Pages: 388

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Dragged to Hell by demons at the behest of his supposed friends, Stark has spent 11 years battling in the arenas in Hell. Instead of facing lions and bears, he faced demons and other hell beasts. He was traded from one of Lucifer’s generals to another and was just generally treated as Hell’s bitch. Now, he has snuck his way out of the pit and is more than ready to seek vengeance for both his false imprisonment and the murder of his beloved girlfriend.

The world has changed a lot in eleven years. Not only must he adapt quickly, he has to launch a game plan to get his vengeance before everyone knows he’s back. Some groups have already been tipped off to his presence and are hindering his quest. He’s a one track man though and he’ll have his vengeance, opponents be damned.

This was a fun, although not very profound, read. Stark is stubborn, yet not unfeeling despite all the torture he’s been through. He’s amiable in the face of a world against him. Literally both Heaven and Hell do their best to get in his way, but he’s picked up so many tricks in his short, violent life, that even they cannot quite catch up with him.

So if you’re looking for a good, fun vengeance story that features a hit man that escaped Hell, look no further.

High Voltage (Fever #10) – Book Review

Published Date: March 6, 2018

Publishing Co.: Delacorte Press

Pages: 476

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This might as well have been titled: Dani: The Most Unique, Misunderstood, Better Than Everyone Else, Heroine.

Man, does this girl love talking about herself and how different she is from everyone else on the planet. I don’t care if it’s true, I don’t need to read about it relentlessly. I fully admit that the Dani books are always the hardest for me to slog through. I thought it might be a bit better because she’s an adult now but unfortunately, her mind is still very much a teenager.

I’m not even going to explain the plot, it barely moved. There was a bad guy, they take care of it all too quickly because Dani is oh so mighty and then they move on to more character “development” for Dani.

I could care less about Kat’s point of view, though I know it’s required for the minimum amount of plot movement that happens.

After all of this complaining, why I am still reading this series?

1. I have a lot of time invested in it.

2. I love a lot of the side characters.

3. The world building is great.

4. The plot line is still interesting even though it stalls in this volume.

5. It looks like Mac is back as main POV in the next book.

I’m actually giving this more stars than it deserved because I still did enjoy myself whenever Dani stopped talking about how awesome she is.

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) – Book Review

Published Date: September 3, 2002

Publishing Co.: ROC

Pages: 446

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

A vast improvement from Grave Peril.

It probably helped that this had zero Buzzkillington the Third in it. (Michael.)

In Summer Knight, we see a complete unraveling of Harry in regards to the ending of the last book and what happened to his girlfriend, Susan. He doesn’t care much about anything other than trying to find something to help her resist her new semi-vampire status. In the mean time, vampires have declared war on Harry and the White Council and have put hits out on both. Harry is under intense scrutiny by the Council and may even get fed to the vampires to help put things back to right. At least that’s the opinion of Harry’s enemies among the Council. As if all that wasn’t enough, war is brewing between the two faerie courts and Harry’s been dragged in against his will to help absolve Queen Mab of murder. So needless to say, Harry can’t sit in his basement studying any more.

Here, we begin to see some of Harry’s more annoying traits begin to die down. He recognizes that keeping people in the dark, in order to protect them, is actually only doing harm. He still wants to save all the damsels but he acknowledges that sometimes, the damsels can handle themselves.

He also begins to accept help from his friends instead of trying to be the lone hero so that no one else but him gets hurt. He lets them know the level of danger and leaves the decision to attend the melee up to his possible allies.

The growth of Harry Dresden looks good on him.

spoilers below

I’m very upset about the death of Meryl. I think she would have been an absolutely great character addition to this series beyond one book. I could read a million more books about troll girl.

My favorite battle moment was when Harry looked at an enemy, yelled, “Meep! Meep!” and ran away.

I’m relieved this is picking up again. Maybe I won’t wait so long to continue onto the next book.

Missing in Michigan (Alex Bentley #1) – Book Review

Published Date: November 2019

Publishing Co.: Midnight Grasshopper Books

Pages: 176

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Alex Bentley is a ghost therapist. She helps spirits move onto whatever afterlife exists. People hire her to rid themselves of troublesome ghosts that are effecting business or driving the living person insane. Her latest case pulls her to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. What at first appears to be your average restless spirit turns into a missing persons case. The police have put in virtually zero effort in finding missing teenage boys, instead just labeling them drug addicts and runaways. The rumors in the small town even point to Native American folklore as the possible culprit.

This book is absolutely fine if you take it for what it is. A paranormal mystery with minimum world building and fairly two dimensional characters. There is a possible love triangle and some insta-love happening and isn’t that the formula for a million urban fantasies out there?

As someone who helped start a small business, I find her complete lack of business sense annoying. She’ll jet off to help someone with no guarantee of getting paid or getting paid much more than it’s costing her. She’s flying to other states, spending days at a time, coming home and having barely any money to show for it. She’s on the brink of losing everything, yet she does it again. You can point out that you can’t put a price on doing what you love, but when you’re the only known ghost therapist, you can literally put a price tag on it.

All the action parts were sparse, easily handled and over almost immediately. Even drawing out more detail of an eventual trial would have provided some well needed depth.

What this book needs is more fleshing out. More world building, more character building and progression, and more descriptions of virtually everything. At times you went from being inside the character’s mind frame to the character addressing you as if you were an audience or they were writing a letter. Anytime that Alex thought anything remotely deep that might resound with the reader, it was pointed out how serious and dark things were getting in her head and she tried to lighten the mood with some quip.

There is a lot of potential here for a great urban fantasy if the author worked out a few of these kinks. Otherwise, it’s fine but not something I’ll run around recommending to my friends.

#SpooktasticReads : Nightwise (Nightwise #1) – Book Review

Published Date: August 18, 2015

Publishing Co.: Tor Books

Pages: 320

Goodreads synopsis.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

“The banker was crucified on the wall of his Wall Street office, fountain pens rammed through both wrists, an Armani Jesus.”

Well hello there. You have my attention.

When that’s your opening sentence to the story, you just know you’re embarking on a dark and gritty ride.

Laytham Ballard was born a Wisdom, as his grandma called him. It ran in the family. She tried her best to instill the whole, “With great power comes great responsibility,” thing in him, but sometimes, life throws more at a little boy than he can handle. With lots of power swirling within him and a broken heart, Laytham lashed out on a level no normal parent has to deal with. He raised the dead and caused a slaughter.

That was only the beginning of his moral down slide. He spent his life hunting other people in the Life and building a legend of himself as the biggest bad ass in town. It doesn’t matter how dirty he has to fight to build that image, he’s sold half his soul already.

Even villains have their own strange loyalties, so when one of his only friends is dying, he makes a promise to avenge his wife’s brutal death. The one thing his friend was never able to do while living. But the target hasn’t been seen in nearly 11 years, and has some very big friends that Laytham will have to get past first. He’ll have to use every trick in his book to find him and then, will he even have the power to take him down?

It really hurts your pride when you doubt just how bad ass you are.

This is a dark urban fantasy with an anti-hero that you can’t trust but you also, can’t wait to see what he does next.

Blood Kissed (Lizzie Grace #1) – Book Review

Published Date: May9, 2017

Publishing Co.: ebook, no publisher listed

Pages: 330

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I was having a werewolf itch, so I perused some books that I already own and this was one of the options. It also had witches, another favorite of mine, so I sat down, ready for some good paranormal fun.

Lizzie and her witch familiar, Belle, moved and opened up shop on a werewolf reservation. Things are pretty quiet for a couple of months until Lizzie is asked to use some of her psychic ability to find a missing teenager. The quest leads to murder and the discovery of an extremely powerful villain. Lizzie helps the local werewolf Ranger (werewolf police) investigate and attempt to stop the bad guy before more people die.

Extreme lack of werewolf. Sure, the love interest is a werewolf, but the wolfiest he gets is sniffing the air and one howl, maybe two.

And Judas Priest, the amount of showers I had to read about Lizzie taking. I get it, you’re cleanly, let’s move on. Twice a day showers is a bit obnoxious and took up entirely too much of the story. If the showers were axed, there would have been more room for character development or world building.

I’ve read the first books to a couple of Keri Arthur series now and honestly, the main characters are all very similar. I feel mostly in appearance but in personality too. I have yet to be impressed with any of the series and this one is the same. It’s not bad but not something I’m likely to continue reading unless I’m bored and my options are limited.

Scourged (Iron Druid Chronicles #9) – Book Review

Published Date: April 3, 2018

Publishing Co.: Del Rey

Pages: 268

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

One of my favorite urban fantasy series of all time has come to an end. This was literally one of the books that sparked my interest in the genre and now that it’s over, it’s so very bittersweet. (Slomo said it best.)

After centuries of running, hiding, surviving and causing general chaos, Atticus O’Sullivan is facing Ragnarok. He caused it, so he must also try to prevent it from succeeding and destroying the earth. While he is fighting with the ‘good guys,’ he’s made many enemies there and the feeling that he won’t walk away from this battle even if they win, is riding his conscious.

While Atticus handles Ragnarok, Granuaile and Owen fight battles on other parts of the planet. Granuaile fights alongside the Monkey Kind in Taiwan, while Owen globe hops helping out where the planet needs it. He makes a super cute sloth friend in South America while convincing a vengeful nature goddess that destroying all humanity won’t save the earth.

Ragnarok was a very intense battle scene and I loved how everything played out. The multiple pantheons coming together to battle Loki and Hel was an exciting concept that worked beautifully. If there was ever a series that married various mythologies with such coherency, this was it and a large part of why I’ve loved it for years.

The ending was something that I really did not expect, which adds huge bonus points when you cannot predict something you’ve been involved with for a long time. I cannot honestly tell you if I’m sad or not about the way it ended. Maybe a mix of both. While it wasn’t what I was hoping/expected, it definitely fit.

This will remain a series that I highly recommend to people for the foreseeable future. Whether you’re looking to dip your toes into fantasy or specifically urban fantasy, or love mythology, or paranormal, or action and adventure, there is something here for everyone.

Besieged (Iron Druid Chronicles #8.5) – Book Review

Published Date: July 11, 2017

Publishing Co.: Del Rey

Pages: 235

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Required reading before Scourged.

I’m always skeptical when something says it’s required reading before moving on with a series. (Also, it tends to annoy me. I don’t like when novellas become ‘required’.) In this case, it’s true. There are some relationship shake ups that you’ll have no clue about if you skip this.

Enough complaining about forced reading. (I know, I’m SO tortured. How dare someone force me to read.) This is a rather fun collection of short stories regardless. They are told from different perspectives. There is a story from Granuille and a couple from Owen, along with our MC Atticus.

Despite my bitching, I love when the short stories are about Atticus during times of historical significance and how he affected them. I think if I had to pick a favorite for this collection, it would be how he met Shakespeare and saved his life, Goddess at the Crossroads.