Category Archives: Review

Review: Ripper by Isabel Allende

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About the book, Ripper

Ripper

The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Though their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda’s father, she’s reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her—Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco’s elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.

While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature—as is her father, the SF PD’s deputy chief of homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior Amanda is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and to Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, probing hints and deductions that elude the police department. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother’s disappearance have something to do with the series of deaths? Now, with her mother’s life on the line, Amanda must solve the most complex mystery she’s ever faced before it’s too late.

Purchase a copy:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the author, Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is the bestselling author of twelve works of fiction, four memoirs, and three young adult novels, which have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages, with more than 57 million copies sold. In 2004, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2012. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, she lives in California.

Connect with Isabel:

Website | Facebook

My Thoughts:

More than twenty years ago, I met my husband online. Specifically, I met him on a MUSH (it stands for “multi-user shared hallucination” and it refers to an online, real-time, text-based role-playing environment), which is a sort of online game. It is this experience, with the way our online and offline lives bleed into each other that made me really, really want to read the latest offering from Isabel Allende: Ripper.

If you’ve ever read Allende’s work, you know that she has this amazing way of using language that is both descriptive and immersive and amazingly lyrical, even when she’s talking about a man who was skewered by a baseball bat (which is a sight we’re treated to in the opening chapters). Ripper is no different than her other work in that respect.

But here’s where it is different: It rides the line between Young Adult/New Adult and Contemporary fiction. It’s a mystery/thriller but it’s also a family drama, a love story, and a coming of age tale. And did I mention there’s role-playing.

Of course, no matter what we’re reading, we read it through the veil of our own experiences. While my history with gaming drew me to the story, what kept me intrigued was the relationship between Amanda and her grandfather, Blake. Why? Because I was the favorite of my own grandfather, and the relationship Allende drew in Ripper resonated with me very strongly.

There are many reasons to pick up this novel. Pick it up because you like free-spirited women who care about their daughters despite having virtually nothing in common with them. Pick it up because you or someone you know has been involved in a computer game – even if it’s one of those tacky first-person shooter MMORPGs that all the kids are playing. Pick it up because you know Allende’s work and want to have the comprehensive Allende experience. You can even pick it up because you’re intrigued by the title over a picture of the Golden Gate bridge. It really doesn’t matter why you read it.

What matters is that you do, because it’s a wonderful story, and you will not be disappointed.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a virtual book tour. For the tour page, click here.

Review: What I Had Before I Had You, by Sarah Cornwell

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About the book, What I Had Before I Had You

What I Had Before I Had You

Written in radiant prose and with stunning psychological acuity, award-winning author Sarah Cornwell’s What I Had Before I Had You is a deeply poignant story that captures the joys and sorrows of growing up and learning to let go.

Olivia Reed was fifteen when she left her hometown of Ocean Vista on the Jersey Shore. Two decades later, divorced and unstrung, she returns with her teenage daughter, Carrie, and nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Distracted by thoughts of the past, Olivia fails to notice when Daniel disappears from her side. Her frantic search for him sparks memories of the summer of 1987, when she exploded out of the cocoon of her mother’s fierce, smothering love and into a sudden, full-throttle adolescence, complete with dangerous new friends, first love, and a rebellion so intense that it utterly recharted the course of her life.

Olivia’s mother, Myla, was a practicing psychic whose powers waxed and waned along with her mercurial moods. Myla raised Olivia to be a guarded child, and also to believe in the ever-present infant ghosts of her twin sisters, whom Myla took care of as if they were alive—diapers, baby food, an empty nursery kept like a shrine. At fifteen, Olivia saw her sisters for the first time, not as ghostly infants but as teenagers on the beach. But when Myla denied her vision, Olivia set out to learn the truth—a journey that led to shattering discoveries about herself and her family.

Sarah Cornwell seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this riveting debut novel, as she examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the powerful forces of loss, family history, and magical thinking.

Buy a Copy:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the author, Sarah Cornwell

Sarah Cornwell

Sarah Cornwell grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania. Her fiction has appeared in the 2013 Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Missouri Review, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, and Hunger Mountain, among others, and her screenwriting has been honored with a Humanitas Prize.

A former James Michener Fellow at UT-Austin, Sarah has worked as an investigator of police misconduct, an MCAT tutor, a psychological research interviewer, and a toy seller. She lives in Los Angeles.

Connect with Sarah:

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My Thoughts

Like Olivia Reed, I spent the first several years of my life (and many summers thereafter) on the Jersey shore. It was, in fact, that particular setting that drew me to this book. In my mind, Ocean Vista is much more like vintage Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, though my guess is that it’s really based on Seaside Heights.

But the setting, while important, takes a back seat to the story, and wow! Sarah Cornwell weaves a damn good story.

At heart, it’s the story of mothers and daughters: Olivia as daughter, humoring her mother by ‘feeding’ the ghosts of her twin sisters, dealing with hurt and pain when she learns those sisters are not so ethereal as she was rased to believe Olivia as mother, with a bratty teen of her own and a special needs child, riding the edge between patience and frustration, always loving her children but sometimes not liking them very much.

Cornwell tells both halves of the story with grace and ease. She puts in enough detail that we can see the cast-away baby food, smell the greasy boardwalk pizza, hear the crinkle of the plastic on the perfectly used diapers thrown out each week, taste the salt-water taffy.

She leaves enough to the imagination that only a careful reading shows us what is real and what isn’t. She writes real people and real situations but with a magical feel that draws you in and compels you to continue.

Translation: Reading this book is like riding a Ferris Wheel. At times you’re at the bottom of the loop, and at times you’re at the peak, but you’re always along for the ride, and from a good portion of it, the view is incredible.

Goes well with A hotdog, crinkle cut fries, and rootbeer, with cotton candy for dessert.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a virtual book tour. For more information, visit the tour page at TLC Book Tours.

Review: My Mother’s Funeral by Adriana Páramo

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About the book, My Mother’s Funeral

My Mother's Funeral

Every woman has stories to tell about her mother. The mother that she remembers, the mother she wishes she’d had, the mother she doesn’t want to become, and then eventually, the mother she buries. Every immigrant woman has stories to tell about her homeland. My Mother’s Funeral is a combination of both: Mother and Homeland. The book circles around the death of Páramo’s mother but the landscape that emerges is not only one of personal loss and pain, but also of innocence, humor, violence and love.

Drawing heavily upon her childhood experiences and Colombian heritage, the author describes the volatile bond linking mothers and daughters in a culture largely unknown to Americans. The book moves between past (Colombia in the 1940’s) and present lives (USA in 2006), and maps landscapes both geographical (Bogotá, Medellín, Anchorage) as well as psychological, ultimately revealing the indomitable spirit of the women in her family, especially her mother from whom the reader learns what it means to be a woman in Colombia.

My Mother’s Funeral describes four Colombian generations of women who struggle, love, sing and die in a country of mysterious beauty as much as it charts the daunting and transforming process of the mother’s funeral and its unexpected byproduct: the re-acquaintance with a long lost brother, the women in the family, and with them, the whole culture.

Buy a copy:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the Author, Adriana Páramo

Adriana Paramo

Páramo is a cultural anthropologist, writer and women’s rights advocate. Her book Looking for Esperanza, winner of the 2011 Social Justice and Equity Award in Creative Nonfiction (Benu Press) was one of the top ten best books by Latino authors in 2012, the best Women’s Issues Book at the 2013 International Latino Book Awards, and the recipient of a silver medal at the 2012 BOYA, Book of the Year Awards. She is also the author of My Mother’s Funeral, a CNF work set in Colombia released in October 2013 by Cavankerry Press.

Her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and her essays have been included in the Notable American Essays of 2011 and 2012.

Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in The Sun, the CNF Southern Sin Anthology (True Stories of the Sultry South & Women Behaving Badly), Minerva Rising, Redivider, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, American Athenaeum, Consequence Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Carolina Quarterly Review, Magnolia Journal, So To Speak, 580 Split, South Loop Review, New Plains Review, and the rest.

Currently she lives in Qatar, where she divides her time between writing and everything else. Everything else includes teaching zumba/Latin dance and Spanish lessons to Qatari students, among whom, there is a prince.

My Thoughts

I have to confess: when the lovely women who run TLC Book Tours approached me about reviewing Adriana Páramo’s memoir, My Mother’s Funeral, I was a little bit resistant. After all, I watched my grandmother go through, if not actual Alzheimers, then the descent into senility and dementia (there is a clinical difference, though from outside, it looks the same), and seeing her lose so much of herself was incredibly difficult. My own mother is only twenty years older than I am, so I won’t likely have to face this with her for a long while, but once encountered, the spectre haunts you, however subtly.

I could not have been more pleased to be proven wrong, because, yes, this book is inherently sad in some respects: within the first few chapters, we face, with Adriana, the cold fact that she is flying home to bury her mother.

But it’s also beautiful.

First, it’s beautifully constructed. Páramo takes us in and out of time periods and places with smooth transitions, and without we readers ever getting lost. Modern Florida, Colombia in the 40s – each feels as real on the page as they are when actually encountered. In the former, you can smell the sun, sand, and Coppertone, in the latter, the sizzle of lard in a frying pan, the swish of a knife through a tomato or an onion – these are ever present. I’ve never actually tasted aguardiente, but after reading this book, I feel as if I have.

Second, and this is what really struck me, the use of language is simply entrancing. Maybe it’s the inherent flair that comes from speaking Spanish as your first language, or maybe it’s the author’s own musicality, but this book sang to me so much that I spent the week I read it (not normal for me, I typically devour books, but this one had to be savored) wandering around the house accosting my husband, our housemate, even the dogs, and reading passages aloud.

Lyrical, lovely, and oh, so poignant, My Mother’s Funeral is a power piece of memoir/creative non-fiction, and not only do I heartily recommend it to all women (after all, even those of us who have never become mothers are still daughters) but to men as well, because it offers a deep understanding of mother-daughter relationships that is impossible to glean without being in one.

Goes well with The whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking about my mother’s green chile soup, and homemade sangria.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a virtual tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For the tour page, click here.

Review: Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim

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About the book, Last Train to Paris

Last-Train-to-Paris-192x300

Inspired by the story of a distant cousin who was murdered in Paris in 1937, award-winning author Michele Zackheim’s Last Train to Paris is a gripping epic about a half-Jewish female reporter from Nevada who writes for the Paris Courier in the 1930’s. The sole woman in the newsroom, she lives with both sexism and anti-Semitism. Then she meets Leo, a German radical and anti-Nazi and realizes that while Paris is interesting, the truly vital historical story is taking place across the border. Rose undertakes an assignment in the Berlin press office, where she is initially happy and in love until Kristallnacht and the growing threat of Nazism. When World War II is declared, Americans are forced to leave the country and Rose must make an agonizing choice: Who will go with her on the last train to Paris?

Zackheim, acclaimed author of Einstein’s Daughter, tells her story from vantage point of Rose as an elderly woman, Last Train to Paris is at once a historical epic, a love story, and a psychological portrait of one woman’s gradual discovery of who she really is after years of being invisible to herself.

Last Train to Paris will enthrall the same large audience that made In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson and Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky bestsellers.

Buy a copy

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About the author, Michele Zackheim

Michele Zackheim

Michele Zackheim is the author of four books.

Born in Reno, Nevada she grew up in Compton, California. For many years she worked in the visual arts as a fresco muralist, an installation artist, print-maker, and a painter. Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; The Albuquerque Museum; The Grey Art Gallery of New York University; The New York Public Library; The Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum, and The Carlsbad Museum of Art.

She has been the recipient of two NEA awards, and teaches Creative Writing from a Visual Perspective at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her first book, Violette’s Embrace, was published by Riverhead Books. That book is a fictional biography of the French writer Violette Leduc. Her second book, the acclaimed Einstein’s Daughter: The Search for Lieserl (Penguin Putnam, 1999), is a non-fiction account of the mystery of the lost illegitimate daughter of Mileva and Albert Einstein. Broken Colors (Europa Editions, 2007) is the story of an artist, whose life takes her to a place where life and art intersect. Her fourth novel, Last Train to Paris, will be published in January 2014. Zackheim lives in New York City.

Connect with Michele

Website | Facebook

My Thoughts

When it comes to armchair traveling, one of my most frequent destinations is France (in general) and Paris (specifically). Outside of my imagination, I’ve never spent much time in Paris, as most of my trips to France take me to places like Montpelier, Bezier, and Carcassone. Like most people, especially those of us who love words, Paris holds a special place in my heart, and I’ll read almost anything that takes place there.

Michele Zackheim’s novel has only increased that love. Bookended by glimpses of the main character as an elderly woman, the novel takes us to the Paris of the late 1930’s, where the echoes of Hemingway’s footsteps still ring out, though they’re being slowly overtaken by the marching cadence of black-booted Nazis.

First in Paris, and later in Berlin, we get to witness history through R. B. Manon’s eyes, to an often-chilling result, but even before things get grim there are descriptions of people and places that simply sing. In the first few pages of Last Train to Paris, for example, Zackheim describes the hotel where R.B is living, and we meet a host of people who share common spaces with her. Some of them, we may never see again, and some go one to become important, but either way, I felt as if I could see the neighbor waving, smell the cabbage, hear the cacophony of life in crowded residential hotel in a crowded, bustling city.

If you, as I did, loved Midnight in Paris, or if you’ve ever, as I have, watched old movies and fantasized about being a foreign correspondent, then you simply must read Last Train to Paris. You will not regret it.

Goes well with espresso with a twist of lemon on the side, and a butter croissant.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. For the tour page, click here.

Review: Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, by Janice Gary

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Short Leash by Janice Gary

About the book, Short Leash

It’s hard to believe that a walk in the park can change a life – let alone two – but for Janice Gary and her dog Barney, that’s exactly what happened.

Gary relied on dogs to help her feel safe when walking on her own ever since being attacked on the streets of Berkeley as a young woman. This solution worked well for years until her canine companion passed on. Grieving, and without the benefit of a guardian, she encounters a stray Lab-Rottweiler puppy in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot and falls for his goofy smile and sweet nature. With his biscuit-sized paws, Barney promises to grow into her biggest protector yet. But fate intervenes when Barney is viciously attacked by another dog just before his first birthday. From that time on, he becomes dog-aggressive. Walking anywhere with Barney is difficult. But for Gary, walking without him is impossible.

It’s only when she risks taking him to a local park that both of their lives change forever. There, Janice faces her deepest fears and discovers the grace of the natural world, the power of love and the potency of her own strengths. And Barney no longer feels the need to attack other dogs. Beautifully written, Short Leash is a moving tale of love and loss, the journey of two broken souls finding their way toward wholeness.

Buy a copy of Short Leash

Buy from Amazon

Short Leash at Amazon.com

About the author, Janice Gary

Janice Gary

Janice Gary is the author of Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, which was chosen as a “Groundbreaking memoir” by Independent Publisher and a New Pages “Editor’s Pick”. She is the recipient of the Christine White Award for Memoir and the Ames Award for Personal Essay. As a writing coach, she helps others writers find their unique voice and stories.

Connect with Janice:

Website
Facebook

My Thoughts

Not only do I have three dogs of my own (all rescue mutts), but I actually work in rescue as a shelter-pet evangelist and dog fosterer, so when I was offered the chance to read and review Janice Gary’s book, Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, I leapt at the opportunity, even though it meant reading a pdf copy.

I’m glad I did, because Janice’s story is one that almost every woman can relate to. While I’ve never been attacked, I know the feeling of vulnerability that comes with being in a dark parking lot, a questionable part of town, the last car on the subway, and I have an active enough imagination that extrapolating what Ms. Gary must have felt is an easy reach for me. I have, however, had one of my dogs attacked, and while I was fortunate in that my own pet was mostly unharmed, I know the fear that comes in that moment when an animal in your care is threatened or injured.

As well, I know the safety that comes from having a big dog. My husband travels a lot, and I feel much more secure knowing that I have 80 pounds of pointer/boxer and 75 pounds of Catahoula/Rottie/Brittany/Aussie at my back should anything happen – and I live in a relatively safe neighborhood. Every dog owner, though, can relate to the canine litmus test: if my dog doesn’t like you, I’m probably better off avoiding you entirely.

But I digress.

Janice Gary tells her story – of being attacked, of losing her canine companion, and of finding a new best friend, and almost losing him, with both candor and finesse. When you read her words, you feel like she’s sitting across the table, sharing a coffee with you, and you want to reach out and hold her hand, or pet Barney’s great, big head.

Her first walk with him had me both shaking with concern and rooting for both human and dog to do well, and my investment in her story only grew the further I read.

This is a memoir, so there isn’t a plot to discuss, and you don’t get to criticize someone’s choices. Instead, I encourage everyone to read this book, because Short Leash is beautiful, heartfelt, and truly inspiring, without ever being insipid. And when you’ve finished reading it, go cuddle your own pups. Don’t have one? Adopt one. Big Black Dogs are the best playmates and walking companions anyone can have, and they’re always the last to be adopted.

Goes well with A cold coke and two hot dogs, one of which you share with your canine companion.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a virtual book tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. Click here for the tour page.

Review: The Tempest Murders by P.M. Terrell

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My Thoughts

The Tempest Murders was the perfect mystery to read on New Year’s Eve in Texas, even though it was set on the coast, during hurricane season. Why? Because when you’re on holiday time anyway, having a novel that is set before, during, and after a major storm just makes the world recede even further, and the story live more.

Boy did this story live.

Part of it takes place in the past, in the dreams of main character Ryan, who is reliving the events of a couple centuries before as he sleeps. The series of murders he dreams about are eerily similar to a serial killer case he’s working on in the current era, and when the woman who is his lover in his dreams appears before him in the guise of a news reporter following his investigation things get incredibly surreal.

The investigation itself was fairly obvious, which meant the puzzle part of the mystery wasn’t really “whodunnit?” but “how do we PROVE whodunnit?” and “why did he do it?” This isn’t at all a bad thing, but it means that The Tempest Murders sometimes feels more like a paranormal romance with mystery interludes than anything else. (In truth, I’m fairly certain that’s the author’s intention.)

The characters are interesting and dimensional, and I enjoyed the story immensely. This isn’t a novel for scholarly discussion or term paper fodder, but it’s definitely an entertaining read, and makes you wonder about concepts like genetic history and reincarnation. The only flaw is that we didn’t get ENOUGH of the paranormal – no explanation, and both Ryan (the detective) and Cait (the reporter) seemed to have little problem just accepting the premise behind Ryan’s dreams and the eventual resolution.

Goes well with shepherd’s pie and hard cider. Driving rainstorm optional.

This spotlight is part of a virtual tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book. Click HERE for the tour page.

For information about the author, P.M. Terrell, see the book spotlight I posted last Friday.

Review: The In-Between Hour, by Barbara Claypole White

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About the author, Barbara Claypole White

Barbara Claypole White

Barbara Claypole White writes and gardens in the forests of North Carolina. English born and educated, she’s married to an internationally-acclaimed academic. Their son, an award-winning poet / musician, attends college in the Midwest. His battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have inspired her to write love stories about damaged people. The Unfinished Garden, Barbara’s debut novel, won the 2013 Golden Quill for Best First Book. The In-Between Hour is her second novel.

Connect with Barbara

Website
Facebook
Twitter

My Thoughts

“Hannah sank down in front of him and eased his head onto her chest. In the distance, bottles and cans clunked into the recycling truck. Their world was imploding, and it was recycling day.”
~Barbara Claypole White, The In-Between Hour

That paragraph, from near the end of The In-Between Hour (but no spoilers, I promise), is one of the perfect human moments that made me fall in love with Barbara Claypole White’s second novel. She has these moments all through the story, and every time, they make me nod or smile, not necessarily because they’re funny, but because they come from a place of truth.

I confess I was a bit leery when I realized this was technically a Harlequin novel. Okay, it’s Harlequin/MIRA, but still…they do have a reputation for being more than a little bit, well, fluffy.

But In-Between Hour, while a romance, is anything but fluffy.

Instead, it’s a lovingly constructed glimpse at a man grieving for his lost child and coping with a father who is showing signs of either Alzheimer’s or dementia, and a woman who gives as much time and energy to saving animals as she does to caring for her (adult) children, one of whom is quite broken. It’s also the story of an aging father trying to save his memories of love and loss while still being a parent (because you never quite stop) and another woman, who is a friend to all but doesn’t always love herself as much as she should.

It’s a story about real hearts, all of which are slightly cracked or dented, as happens in this journey we call life, and it’s a story about how if we’re supremely lucky we can find a person – or people – whose damage doesn’t clash too much with our own.

Author White handles everything with finesse and an attention to detail that is both elegant and entrancing. Her dialogue feels real, and her characters feel like people you might encounter – funny, flawed and fabulously three-dimensional.

I like that she sets up a possible “perfect ending,” but leaves things loose enough that free will still plays a part, and I like that all of her characters have their own intelligence, even though some of them aren’t necessarily well-educated.

Most of all, though, I liked that even though this was a conventional romance in many ways, The In-Between Hour was unconventional enough to keep me interested from the first page to the last.

Goes well with coffee with a touch of egg nog instead of cream, and chocolate gingerbread with candycane frosting.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a virtual book tour. Click HERE to visit the tour page and see the list of stops.

Review: Perfect by Rachel Joyce

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About the author, Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce is the author of the international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. She is also the award-winning writer of more than twenty plays for BBC Radio 4.

She started writing after a twenty-year acting career, in which she performed leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and won multiple awards. Rachel Joyce lives with her family on a Gloucestershire farm.

Connect with Rachel

Website: Rachel Joyce Books
Facebook: Rachel Joyce

My Thoughts

I love it when I go into a book thinking it will be one thing, only to discover it’s something else entirely. Perfect is just such a book.

On one level, it’s the story of two boys, Byron and James, and how they influence each other, especially in regard to their reactions after Byron’s mother is involved in an accident, told in alternating chapters with the story of a man named Jim, who uses his OCD to protect the world from the bad things he feels he causes, and how those two timelines eventually converge. But it’s also a story about time and youth, love and maturity, and how close each of us really is to the “insanity” side of the mental health spectrum.

Joyce’s voice for the chapters that focus on the boys and Byron’s mother takes on the quality of a fairy-tale or fable. Everything is wrapped in gauze and seen through the soft-focus filter of memory. Jim’s chapters, though, are told in crisp HD clarity, an interesting juxtaposition with the cloudiness of Jim’s mental state.

Having finished reading Perfect over the weekend, and taking a day to digest it before posting this review, I’m left feeling like I’ve read the most profound novel ever, and at the same time, like I didn’t quite get everything the author was hoping the reader would perceive.

Is it a good story? Yes. Would I recommend it? Yes.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I liked all – or any – of the individual characters. I know I wanted to slug Byron’s father a lot, and wanted to shake some sense into his mother.

But you don’t have to LIKE the characters to enjoy the experience of reading a novel, and after everything, I find that I did enjoy Rachel Joyce’s novel, because it made me see things like sanity and stability a little differently.

I already knew that no one is “perfect,” but this made me realize how many people still try to be.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. To see the entire schedule of tour stops, visit this link: Book Tour for Perfect, by Rachel Joyce

Review: The Reckless Engineer by Jac Wright

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About the author, Jac Wright

(taken from the author’s website, with permission)
Jac Wright is a poet published in literary magazines, a published author, and an electronics engineer educated at Stanford, University College London, and Cambridge who lives and works in England. Jac studied English literature from the early age of three, developing an intense love for poetry, drama, and writing in Trinity College Speech & Drama classes taken afternoons and Saturdays for fourteen years, and in subsequent creative writing classes taken during the university years. A published poet, Jac’s first passion was for literary fiction and poetry writing as well as for the dramatic arts. You will find these influences in the poetic imagery and prose, the dramatic scene setting, and the deep character creation.

These passions – for poetry, drama, literary fiction, and electronic engineering – have all been lovingly combined to create the first book in the literary suspense series, The Reckless Engineer. There are millions of professionals in high tech corporate environments who work in thousands of cities in the US, the UK, and the world such as engineers, technicians, technical managers, investment bankers, and corporate lawyers. High drama, power struggles, and human interest stories play out in the arena every day. Yet there are hardly any books that tell their stories; there are not many books that they can identify with. Jac feels compelled to tell their stories in The Reckless Engineer series.

Jac also writes the literary short fiction series, Summerset Tales, in which he explores characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances in the semi-fictional region of contemporary England called Summerset, partly the region that Thomas Hardy called Wessex. Some of the tales have an added element of suspense similar to Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. The collection is published as individual tales in the tradition of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales. The first tale, The Closet, accompanies the author’s first full-length literary suspense title, The Reckless Engineer.

Connect with Jac

Website: Jac Wright Books
Facebook: Jac Wright Books
Twitter: @JacWrightBooks

My Thoughts

When author Jac Wright asked me if I’d feature his book, The Reckless Engineer here at Bibliotica, I thought, “A mystery with an engineer as the sleuth? Interesting.” Because I’m married to an engineer, I know too well the way their brains grab onto a problem, and never let go until a solution is found. At times, I’ve felt like I was married to some weird stoic-farmboy amalgam of Data, Spock, Geordi, and Scotty, except that MY beloved engineer is a total Hufflepuff.

My point is that Jac Wright, an engineer himself, captures this personality perfectly with his lead character, Jeremy, who is called in to help a (married) friend whose lover is murdered.

Jac blends a distinctly English (with a bit of Scottish thrown in for flavor) criminal procedural with scenes that take place in a seaside town (Portsmouth) and, at times, I was as engaged with wanting to explore the town as I was with the story.

But of course, the story comes first, and in The Reckless Engineer Wright gives us dialogue that feels real, a plot that is wonderfully elegant, and characters that are both complex and interesting. In doing so, he gives us a new kind of geek detective, one who has a incredible amount of knowledge and information stored in his head, and knows just how to effectively, if somewhat reluctantly, tap into it in order to solve a crime.

I would happily read more of Jeremy’s adventures, and am eager to explore Jac Wright’s other work, as well.

Goes well with proper fish and chips and lager.

Review: The Howling Heart by April Bostic

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About the book, The Howling Heart

The Howling Heart

Paige Donovan is an ambitious college graduate who aspires to reach the top of the corporate ladder. She’s climbing fast when she’s given the promotion of a lifetime at a prestigious fashion magazine in New York City. Her bright future comes to an unexpected halt after news of her father’s death. She inherits his old cabin in the Colorado Rockies, and just when she thinks her luck couldn’t get any worse, she has a car accident in the mountains and awakens in the small, remote community of Black River.

Soon, she’s engulfed in the mystical world of Varulv–wolves descended from 13th century Scandinavia and blessed by Norse gods with the ability to appear human. Paige is desperate to return home, but she never expects to fall for her rescuer, Riley Gray, a charming young werewolf from England who offers her an alternate future with his pack.

Now, she must choose between the career she’s always wanted and the love she’s always dreamed.

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About the author, April Bostic

April Bostic is a New Jersey-based, Adult Romance author who enjoys unleashing her creativity and letting her imagination run wild. Her love of romance books inspired her to become not just a reader, but also a writer. In December 2008, she self-published her first novel, a contemporary romance with a supernatural twist entitled A Rose to the Fallen.

Her first short story, “Right Here, Right Now,” released in January 2012, is an erotic romance with a dash of S&M. The following year, she released two more short stories: a romantic urban fantasy inspired by the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche entitled “Eros, My Love”, and a sexy romantic comedy entitled “Love Addiction.”

After five years, she released her second novel, The Howling Heart in August 2013, a paranormal romance that delves into the mystical world of werewolves and Norse gods. To end her busiest year in publishing, April will release her fourth short story in December 2013, an 18th century paranormal romance entitled “A Dark Scandal.”

Connect with April

Website: AprilBostic.com
Goodreads: April Bostic

My Thoughts

Having spent several of my formative years in small towns in the Colorado Rockies, I had absolutely no trouble accepting that there could be a town that wasn’t easy to find, harboring a community of people who aren’t werewolves, except when they are. Actually, about the only thing that really challenged my willing suspense of disbelief in regard to The Howling Heart was that Paige could be working at Elle and getting a fat promotion so soon after college. (Kudos though, for making it Elle, I love Elle.)

But that’s a small quibble about a book that I otherwise found to be both engaging and enjoyable. As a reader, I might have questioned Paige’s choices, but when you’re young, grieving, and caught up in a combination of attraction and nostalgia, you don’t always make smart choices.

But I’m backing into this review, so let me start over:

April Bostic’s The Howling Heart gives us a new spin on werewolves. These aren’t blood-thirsty creatures out for a quick human-shaped snack, but people who live more in tune with the land, in a culture influenced by Norse mythology and shaped by the modern world. It’s an interesting juxtaposition – as the male lead/love interest Riley Gray points out – they eat spaghetti Bolognese when in human form, and take meals on the hoof when…not.

It’s also an interesting twist on the conventional romance novel tropes. Yes, Paige is young and has a career that doesn’t quite match her age, yes, Riley is hot-hot-hot and super-sensitive, but somehow it all works to create a magical bubble, a sort of wolfy Brigadoon surrounded by aspen and pine trees instead of heather.

The element of mystery – what did Paige’s father know, and when did he know it? – only adds to the story. Romance and mystery have always been compatible, however, so this should not be at all surprising.

Author Bostic write dialogue that doesn’t sound stilted, and puts enough flavor into her foreign-born characters that they don’t sound American but also don’t sound like caricatures. It’s a tough balance for any writer, but she’s nailed it.

Likewise, the supporting characters – Paige’s father, who dies before we really know him, Riley’s sister Quinn, and their father and stepmother – are all given lovely moments to show off their dimensions.

If you enjoy a good romantic romp, with a dash of supernatural spiciness, The Howling Heart is for you.

Goes well with a hearty bowl of venison stew and crusty brown bread, and a glass of hard cider.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a blog tour with TLC Book Tours. Click here for the list of tour stops.