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Café Insomniac

Book Review of Café Insomniac, by Mark Capell

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Cafe InsomniacAuthor, Mark Capell sent me a copy of his novel, Café Insomniac.

Description from Amazon:
“The trick is not to fear the shadows but to embrace them… Night-time has become a good friend,” says Justin.

But for how long?

Twenty-five-year-old insomniac Justin Brooks opens an all-night café for something to do, to fill the long nights. But soon after opening, one of his customers is found murdered in a side street.

What Justin doesn’t know is that his insomnia is connected to the murder.

Even before the murder, inexplicable things were starting to happen in Justin’s life. But after it, life becomes very strange indeed…

…..His eyes stream when it rains outside….. Another café appears, out of the fog, out of nowhere….. Footsteps follow him everywhere….. The dead person talks to him, though it’s not a ghost….. And a magician waits for him, perched on a high wire, high up in the night sky…..

Strange things indeed. But these strange things can’t possibly have anything to do with the murder. 

Can they?

Nobody who visits Café Insomniac can ever look at the world in the same way again.

“I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t — and which is most dangerous.”

Review:
In some ways this is a really interesting novel. It’s certainly well written. Mr. Capell sure knows how to string a sentence together for the most emotional impact. It’s also well edited. And since you spend a decent amount of time in Justin’s head (befuddled as it may be) you get a feel for him. There is a lot of such praise I could give the book.

Unfortunately, I also thought it dragged. Now, some of this is, I’m sure, purposeful on the author’s part. Justin’s sleep deprived mind moves at the speed of molasses. The slow pace of the novel echoes this, creating a certain appropriate atmosphere. But it also made the book feel much longer than it actually is. (And at 360+ pages, it’s already pretty long.)

What’s more, despite all Justin’s hallucinatory, confused ideas creating unexpected twists to the plot, the whole thing was disappointingly predictable in the end. If felt very much like the author wimped out a little bit and veered back onto safer ground before his conclusion.

I was also left with a few questions, though most of it did wrap up nicely. For example (and I’m trying valiantly to not include a spoiler here), was he ever really beat up? One would presume so since he really did know his sister’s problem, which infers he really did go to the hospital. If he was really beat up, who did it if XXX was a hallucination? Or what caused the injury to his hand at the end, if the events of the previous night weren’t real? Essentially, the book isn’t always careful to ensure that the effects of things explained away are also explained.

For the most part, however, it’s an interesting and enjoyable read. Well worth picking up if the blurb sounds interesting to you.

Book Review of Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water #2), by S. E. Jakes

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Long Time GoneLast week, I reviewed Catch a Ghost, book one of the Hell or High Water series, by S. E. Jakes. This week, the powers that be at Riptide publishing granted me a copy of Long Time Gone through Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
When a tornado meets a volcano, nothing is safe.

Soldier of fortune Prophet Drews always worked alone—until Tom Boudreaux became his partner. But when Tom walked away three months ago, ostensibly to keep Prophet safe, Prophet learned the true meaning of being alone. Everyone knows that Prophet, a Navy SEAL turned CIA spook turned mercenary, can look after himself. Which means he must’ve driven his lover away.

Even with half a world between them, Prophet can’t get the man out of his head. Maybe that’s why he’s in New Orleans in the middle of a hurricane, protecting Tom’s aunt. But the only looter around is Tom, bursting back into Prophet’s life. It turns out that Prophet’s been stuck in Tom’s head—and heart—too.

Their explosive reunion gets even hotter when Tom is arrested for murder. As they fight to clear his name, they delve deep into his past, finding enemies among everyone they meet. Staying alive in such a dangerous world is hard enough, but they soon discover that fighting to stay together is the most difficult thing they’ve ever done.

Review:
Well, I’ll just start with the obvious here. Tom and Prophet are hot as hell. They were in book one and they still are in book two. I have no complaint on that front, none. I mean, there is just something about two sexy, dangerous men not only stokin’ the fires, but falling hard for one another and showing their softer…cuter side.

Yes, cute is the best word I have for them. (Even if neither character would be pleased with the designation.) When they let their guards down, what results is just plain transformative magic. Suddenly they feel like fragile little boys just looking for a safe place to rest. It’s surprisingly evocative.

I also have no real complaints on their repartee. It was ceaselessly amusing, maybe a little too much at times, but not by much. I loved their back and forth banter and smart aleck comments. I also enjoyed meeting Mike and Blue (and to a lesser extent more of Mal and Cillian). I hope they all show up and play bigger roles in future books.

Where the book fell down for me was in the plot. So much focus was put on Tom and Prophet’s burgeoning relationship that the mystery felt inconsequential. The hurricane that served to get Prophet to New Orleans in the first place hardly even felt like a squall. It was all just background decorations to give Tom and Prophet a credible scenario to be having sex in. Meh.

I enjoyed the book. I’m up for more. But I’ll be reading it for the steamy bits, ’cause that is where the magic is.

Book Review of Aftermath, by Cara Dee

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AftermathI grabbed Cara Dee‘s M/M romance, Aftermath from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Austin Huntley and Cameron Nash are like night and day. One is a family man, works in a nice office, drives an expensive car, and is content to be content. The other one is an antisocial car mechanic with a short fuse.

Some things don’t change. Others definitely do.

After surviving a five-months long kidnapping together, they struggle to return to normalcy, all while realizing that they’re more drawn to each other than they ever could’ve imagined.

Review:
I generally enjoyed this book. It wasn’t anywhere near as dark as I expected. I loved the narrator’s and the men’s voices (not to mention the characters themselves). The dialogue was believable. It was well edited and there were some pretty hot sex scenes. Yum. I seriously considered giving it five stars, based purely on my enjoyment level. But in the end, I decided it didn’t really deserve a full five. So, I’m going with a four star rating.

What held my rating back a bit was that some aspects of it weren’t very believable.  For example: the previously straight man, having his first sexual experience with another guy, takes charge and knows EXACTLY what to do, where everything is, and has no awkward fumbling at all. Really, wouldn’t’ he need at least a little direction or be at least a little nervous? Nope, he’s balls to the wall confident and competent.

The relationship seemed rushed too. I get that the men had been in close quarters together for 5 gruelling months, but it felt like they just woke up one morning and decided to love each-other and then both seamlessly did just that with no discussion or difficulties. It made for some great ‘Ahh’ moments, but should it really be so easy?

I loved Cam (Austin too, but Cam stole the how for me), but his Aspergers didn’t seem to contribute anything. Most of his behaviours could have been explained by the anxiety disorder, so a secondary diagnosis seemed surplus to requirement. 

I also thought that the author wimped out on the abductions a little. A sadist kidnaps 10 men, cuffs & cages them, beats the living daylights out of them, half starves them, but doesn’t molest a single one in any fashion. I’m not saying I wanted a rape scene in there anywhere, but (fiction being what fiction is) if 10 women had been kidnapped in this book they’d all have been ravished within an inch of their lives. Half of them would probably be impregnated and the reader would probably have had to sit through every agonising detail of it all.

The book does a good job of describing the men’s struggles to come to terms with the fact that they, 10 vibrant men, had been overpowered and abducted by a single madman. This was hard for them to accept, as it felt like a loss of manhood. But The fact that they only had to endure physical and mental abuse felt artificial, like there was some notable line of beyond this point go only the truly depraved that the author didn’t want to be associated with. But, honestly, she created a depraved bad guy. He needed to go there IMO, so that the characters could fully face the perceived loss of  their masculine position. Just my opinion, of course, and it does somewhat suggest that all violent offenders must also be sexual offenders, which is of course a fallacy, but in this case I think the book would have been stronger for it.

Lastly, I’m not a huge fan of the sappy hearts and flowers endings. This one definitely had one. Really, the epilogue had no other purpose than to cram the happily ever after down the readers throat. I could have done without it, or at least without it being quite so overpoweringly cheerful.

All in all, I’m well up for reading the next in the series. I loved the characters, I especially appreciated that at 33 and 40 they were full-fledged adults. I thought the writing was crisp and the story was sweet (even if not particularly plausible). Definitely not a waste of my time.