The Girl in the Snow: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery by Alexandria Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Girl in the Snow was a book that did not reach its potential. It’s premise was sound. Carolina Caccia, a divorced mom, takes he kids to a ski resort so the can have time with their father, her ex. This is complicated because he’s there with his new fam. As one would imagine, fireworks ensue, and one of Carolina’s kids goes missing. Since Carolina is an ex-FBI agent who specializes in missing kids (the first in a series of convenient coincidences), naturally, she becomes involved in the investigation.
What did work for me was the characters. They were deep and believable, far from cardboard. The setting was well-done, obviously based on an actual place that the author was familiar with. But ultimately, this story did not work well for me because it felt too contrived. Carolina did some things that were totally off the hook, which should have gotten her into serious trouble, but was given a bye as an ex-FBI agent. There were also too many coincidences, and the ending was somewhat predictable. And a minor point — who the heck was the girl in the snow? IMO, she never did show up.
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Book Review – Damian’s Workshop, by Deborah Kaminski
Damian’s Workshop by Deborah A. Kaminski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Damian’s Workshop is a sci-fi story set in the near future, about Brooke, a graduate student who invents a device, the Memex, to enhance memory, which could possibly be used to ameliorate Alzheimer’s disease or other cognitive disorders.Brooke and her lab mates are testing the machine on mice and applying for permission from the University to test in humans, but are turned down. Brooke is fearful because she may not have enough time to complete her doctoral research before her money runs out, so she makes the fateful decision to test the Memex on herself.
Brooke finds that the Memex thrusts her psyche in the head of a man called Damian who lives in Constantinople in the 13th century. She does not control Damian, her mind simply occupies his head and experiences everything that he does. Brooke eventually figures out which era she is visiting–the time of the 4th Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked by the Crusaders. Thus she has an unparalleled opportunity to observe an important historical event first hand. Or does she? Could all of this be just a dream sparked by the Memex, having no basis in reality?
The plot alternates between Brooke’s 13th century experiences and her contemporary struggle to get the Memex approved and ascertain if she’s really observing history. Author Kaminski has obviously done her homework–the passages describing daily life in ancient Constantinople are detailed and vivid, and her characters, both ancient and modern, come alive on the page. You will also find multiple POVs which the author handles deftly, weaving the individual characters’ tales into a coherent whole.
If Damian’s Workshop has a flaw, it’s that there’s too much detail, at least for me. I’m sure some readers will find Kamiski’s chronicle of quotidian events in the characters’ lives fascinating, especially the historical material, but for me, it caused the pacing to lag, and I found myself rapidly turning pages to get to the answers to important plot questions raised by the author. However, I’d much rather read an author who attempts to do too much than too little.
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Review of Venom! on Texas Book Nook
Today’s stop on the Great Venom! Blog Tour is Texas Book Nook (https://www.texasbooknook.com/), who posted a great review.
I’m going to jump in with the others who so thoroughly enjoyed this book. You will be very pleasantly surprised on the deep and intriguing story you get out of it.
What a clever story with a wonderful balance of endearing moments and mystery.
Thomas A. Burns, Jr. has created a novel in which the main character shows growth. For me that is always something I look for in my favorite main characters. I love that this is a series in which we can watch her over the course of many books.
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Book Review – Dark: A Dark, Paranormal Romance, by Kat Kinney
Dark: A Dark Paranormal Romance by Kat KinneyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A Sexy Romp with Werewolves and Vampires in the World of Blood Moon, Texas
If there’s one thing that Dark shows, it’s that author Kat Kinney does nothing half-way. It’s a story replete with werewolves, vampires, sex and angst, and the convoluted plot flows relentlessly to an unexpected, but well thought out conclusion.
Humans have recently learned that they share the world with shifters and vampires, and an uneasy truce is in place. Against this backdrop, Hayden Crowe, aspiring rocker and part-time barrista is assaulted one night after a gig by a feral werewolf and bitten. Stunned and frightened, she instinctively flees to an old flame, Ethan Caldwell, proprietor of the coffee shop Dark, to help her cope with her radically changed life. Ethan is a born werewolf, who is aware of the difficulty of integrating a newly bitten into the community of packs, and afraid that he won’t be able to do it for Hayden, which will result in her death.
Dark is billed as a romance, and it is, and any good romance must explore the ebbs and flows of a newly-forming relationship. Kinney does that, in spades, with plenty of steamy sex scenes interspersed with attacks of angst brought on both by raging emotions and the werewolf virus coursing through the characters’ veins. The characters are rich, developed both by narration of current events and backstory, with chapters in the past written in italics to help the reader keep track of the era. There’s also the mystery – who did this to Hayden, and why?
If Dark has a failing, it’s that the author tried to cram too much into one story. It is a laudable effort, but for me, it fell short, and it was just too much to keep track of. It was a kaleidoscopic read that necessitated backtracking to keep track of all the disparate threads, and that prevented total immersion in the storyworld for me. I was most interested in the mystery, so I found it tedious to be yanked back into the love story – this is always a problem with hybrid works like this. So I give it four stars, but if you like this genre, I think it will be well worth your time and money.
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The Reviews for Venom! are Coming In!
Book Reviews – The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Silent Patient is a 5-star psychological thriller. It’s the story of a British psychotherapist who becomes fascinated with a woman, Alicia Berenson, who ostensibly murdered her husband by shooting him in the face five times, and then refused to speak a word in her own defense. Naturally, she was convicted and incarcerated in a mental institution, where she continued to maintain her silence. Theo Faber, the protagonist, gets a job at the institution where she’s locked up, and becomes her therapist, obsessed with getting her speaking agin.
The book is written in a first person POV from Theo’s perspective, interspersed with entries from Alicia’s diary. The interplay between Theo and Alicia is well-done, and this is no mean feat, seeing that she remains silent for most of the book. The other characters are all well-drawn, even the minor ones. The plot is cohesive, and while I did figure out the final twist before it was revealed, it was artfully concealed, yet logical. The chapters are short, which makes for a quick read.
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Stripper gets another 4* review on Amazon!
Stripping for Clues
Stripper! was a great murder mystery involving the heroine Nattie McMasters. Nattie seems to be like all young wannabe detectives and is good at getting her nose in places she shouldn’t. Nattie meets a girl at the college, Becca, and before she knows it, she’s wrapped up so tightly in a whirlwind of murder, spying and stripping. Nattie really is an interesting character and Burns does a great job of introducing each character. Each character introduced to the plot was very aptly described and you could get a feel for what the character was going to provide. Sometimes it turned out to be a complete surprise! I enjoyed the book and am interested in Nattie’s future adventures.
Thanks to Helen Mathey-Horn
Book Review – The Wedding Guest, by Jonathan Kellerman
The Wedding Guest by Jonathan Kellerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve been reading Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series since 1985, when I discovered When the Bough Breaks. It’s been a great ride, and the venerable Kellerman shows no signs of losing it with this latest installment.
Unlike some of the other books in the series, this one is a bit understated-it’s just a straightforward investigation into the murder of an unknown woman at a Hollywood wedding. Not that that’s a bad thing. The story really highlights the relationship between Det. Milo Sturgis and Delaware, who’ve been friends for quite a long time. Also unlike some of the other Delaware books, there are no really shocking moments in this story. The chain of events emerges piecemeal from persistence and good, solid investigative technique. The villain is satisfyingly evil, and his motivations believable.
If I have a complaint, it’s the treatment of Delaware’s longtime companion, Robin. She’s been with Alex even longer than Milo, and they’ve had their ups and downs-she even left him for a while at one point in the series. But after she returned, she became pure cardboard. All of the nuances so evident in Alex’s and Milo’s relationship are absent in Alex’s and Robin’s. She comes on stage to provide Alex with food or sex, then vanishes. This was annoying enough for me to dock The Wedding Guest one star.
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A New Amazon Review for Trafficked!
Natalie McMasters is a private investigator trainee and the narrator of this emotional, terror-steeped and frank novel of love, loss, desperation, enslavement and retribution. She’s good at surveillance, patient, calm and alert. She hasn’t had much training or experience in developing projects that consider all possible events and outcomes, so she travels on grit and instinct.
She’s married, to a young Latino lady who is in the states illegally and thus has no standing with ICE. When ICE comes looking, Lupe runs, leaving a distraught Natalie to wonder about the future. Natalie’s decision, after very little consideration is to go looking for Lupe. The trail leads to New York where Natalie becomes tangled with city law enforcement, a gaggle of street people, a detective from her hometown, and finally, an evil band of Albanian sex traffickers.
This explicitly written novel starts slowly and ramps up to a frenetic pace almost immediately as Natalie and her detective friend wander through some of the seamier sections of New York and encounter interesting characters on both sides of the law. Scenes are well developed and often gripping in substance. The author captures a good sense of the scenes and characters in the city and on the Albanian’s ship, in a very adult and explicit fashion.
Book Review – The Disappearing, by Lori Roy
The Disappearing by Lori Roy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Disappearing is a mystery set in a town in northern Florida. Young women are vanishing, no one knows why. Is it nefarious, or just girls being girls?
The Disappearing struck me as more of a character study than a story. Told from multiple POVs, it moved at a glacial pace. Rather than building suspense, this writing style served to mask the true chain of events with the irrelevancies inherent in the stream-of-consciousness of unreliable narrators, which for me, resulted in a loss of interest in the overall plot. However, the characters were truly deep and artfully drawn. I just didn’t like them well enough to remain interested in their deepest thoughts.
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