Category Archives: book review

Book Review of The Vampire Next Door, by Charity Santiago & Evan Hale

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The Vampire Next DoorI grabbed a copy of The Vampire Next Door by Charity Santiago & Evan Hale from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Since the vampire pandemic jumped the Mexican border eight months ago, twenty-five-year-old Kennedy has been holed up in small-town Arizona, fighting for survival among hungry undead and hostile human survivors. Unsure if her missing husband is still alive, Kennedy has no interest in starting a new relationship- until she meets Reeve, the gorgeous vampire next door who can melt Kennedy into a quivering puddle of lust with a single, smoldering glance.

Between ignoring her growing feelings for Reeve and fending off nightly murder attempts from her husband’s undead ex-wife, Kennedy’s got her hands full. She knows that eventually, she’ll have to make a choice: either stay put and wait for rescue that might never happen, or set out on her own in hopes of finding her family.

Review:

I grabbed this when it was free on Amazon and ended up reading it almost immediately. My young daughter caught sight of the cover and said, “Read that one.” Well, who am I to ignore the dictates of a three-year-old?

In some respects, I really enjoyed this story. Kennedy has an interesting personality. She’s a recovering doormat if you will. The vampire apocalypse has really put her life and the people who had been in it in perspective for her. A lot of the book is dedicated to this introspection. And, while I respect the personal growth that resulted from it, she had the same thoughts and mental epiphanies over and over. So, I found much of it repetitive. It also severely cut into the action.

Enter Reeve. Oh, wonderful, wonderful Reeve. He is fabulous. Maybe just a little too fabulous, since the reader never learns what makes him different than other vampires. I also struggled with the fact that Kennedy appreciates his behaviour so very, very much when it is just basic courtesy.

Kennedy had been treated poorly by men. She’d let them control her and treat her as less than an equal. She is subsequently amazed to meet a man who doesn’t treat her this way. That’s great. It really is. But should we really be surprised and praise men for doing nothing more than treating a woman as a mental equal? I got the message being relayed. I did. But that’s kind of a low standard to hold romantic partners to and getting excited over it feels a lot like making it something special (as opposed to the expected norm). Kennedy’s previous behaviour and the demeaning behaviour of both Cole and Eddie are made out to be the norm, what any normal woman should expect from a normal man. But really it’s Reeve’s thoughts and actions that should be the standard by which all other relationships aim to best, as opposed to crow about.

Again, while I appreciate that Kennedy did grow past this juvenile mindset,  a lot of the book takes place before that’s accomplished. I found this really hard to read. I wanted to slap her and then turn to whoever was closest at the time and inform them that she should be expecting more, damn it. She deserves it.

Though not a huge fan of first-person narratives, I thought the book was well written. The dialogue was fresh and flowed well, and the whole situation with The Ex was a fun addition. If there is ever a second book, I’d be thrilled to read it.

A Hidden Fire

Book Review of Elizabeth Hunter’s A Hidden Fire (Elemental Mysteries #1)

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A Hidden FireI downloaded a copy of Elizabeth Hunter‘s A Hidden Fire from the Amazon KDP list. It’s still free BTW. 

Description from Goodreads:
“No secret stays hidden forever.”

A phone call from an old friend sets Dr. Giovanni Vecchio back on the path of a mystery he’d abandoned years before. He never expected a young librarian could hold the key to the search, nor could he have expected the danger she would attract. Now he and Beatrice De Novo will follow a twisted maze that leads from the archives of a university library, through the fires of Renaissance Florence, and toward a confrontation they never could have predicted.

A Hidden Fire is a paranormal mystery/romance for adult readers. It is the first book in the Elemental Mysteries Series.

Review:
For a free Amazon read, A Hidden Fire was surprisingly good. I can honestly say that the dialogue was some of the best I’ve read in a a while. B and Giovanni are quick witted and sarcastic. I really quite enjoyed their banter. I also really liked each of them as characters. Their molasses-slow romance, however, not so much. I got really, really tired of seeing them deny each other.

There were also times when the influence of other popular vampire books was a little too obvious. One particular scene really could have been cut and pasted from Twilight with little alteration beyond being in a library elevator instead of a forest. Nothing in this book is anywhere near as angsty as Twilight though. So big sigh of relief there.

I did think that it wrapped up far, far too easily. B’s computer wiz magic seemed just a little too convenient and I had a hard time accepting that she could pull it off so effortlessly and without any ill after effects. Kind of reminds the reader that main characters often have preternatural luck on top of everything else.

I’m happy to say that the book does conclude to a degree. (So many PNR these days don’t. They end on ridiculous cliffhangers that really just equate to incomplete stories.) A lot of threads are left open though. So anyone, like me, who prefers their stories in tight little packages instead of drug out across a whole series might be frustrated.

As an informative aside, the book is a really clean romance. There is no sex–a few kisses and quite a bit of longing, but no actual culmination. I felt a little cheated by this, but those who prefer to avoid the erotic should really enjoy this one.

Book Review of K.T. Swartz’s Juliet Harrison Novels

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I grabbed K.T. Swartz‘s first Juliet Harrison novel, These Chains That Bind, off of the KDP free list. (It’s still free, BTW.) I then bought the second two, Debtors Remorse and Carry Me Home.

These Chains That BindDescription from Goodreads:
Juliet Harrison can whip up one mean protection spell; Ezra Jacobs can snipe a man from a mile away. They might just be Columbus’ best detective duo… if only they’d stop arguing.

What do FBI agents, a bad-ass ex-marine, and a Mob Errand Boy have in common?

They’re all after one very annoyed Juliet Harrison.

Add to that a friend with an unrelenting ghost problem and a dangerous necromancer on the loose, and Juliet may not survive long enough to help the one person she can’t live without.

Review
I’m gonna start with a little OCD rant that I’ve made before. But it bothers me every single time, so I’m just gonna get it off of my chest. That cover is the wrong damned shape. There I said it. This is a book, not a CD. It needs a vertical rectangular cover so that it fits the standard and looks right when stacked with the rest of my digital books. Doesn’t it bother anyone else? It looks completely unprofessional to me, or at least very homemade (and not in a good way.) OK, moving on to the book.

I spent almost all of this book convinced that I wasn’t actually reading the first of the series. All my googling couldn’t come up with any prequel, so I suppose it must be number one. But there are a lot of rather important events referenced more than once that felt very much like the subject matter of a previous book. Carol’s death, for example, or whatever happened with Eli and his ex-wife, which is apparently how he and Juliet met.

These are not small matters. Carol was apparently Juliet’s long-term girlfriend, who was shot, possibly protecting Juliet. That’s a big deal. That’s important. That was still greatly affecting Juliet in this book, but never fully explored. Then Juliet spent roughly a third of this book helping Eli overcome the aftereffects of whatever transpired in the mysterious past event. That’s a lot of time to spend wondering what exactly it was that transpired.

I was really, really bothered by this. Either fully explore it or leave it out, but to just throw it out with no background and no follow-up is painful to read. Honestly, about 15% through the book, when I was so completely confused by these previous events and just realising they were never going to be explained, I almost gave up. I almost thought that if the author was such a poor storyteller that she didn’t recognise this as a GIANT plot hole, I shouldn’t hold out much hope for the book. I persevered, though, and I’m glad I did, because eventually the book moved away from its own history and developed a story of its own. It’s a darned good story too.

It’s the characters that make it I think. Juliet and Ezra have a wonderfully strained relationship. (Again, wish I knew the history of it. There is apparently 6 years worth.) He doesn’t speak much, but he’s a man of action. Juliet’s normal life would give most of us grey hair and it was a lot of fun to watch her navigate a world full of ghosts and poltergeists. I rather enjoyed the FBI agents as well. There was a lot of humour in Charlie and Juliet’s exchanges.

The plot itself seemed to be split into thirds: helping Ray and his friends, helping Eli, and trying to avoid GW. The whole Ray situation wraps up nicely. The Eli situation kind of wrapped up but really had no beginning, and I suspect it will crop up again in future books, and the GW situation had no end since it’s carrying over into book two. You can maybe see why I was never wholly convinced I really was reading book one.

On the whole, however, I found the writing quite refreshing, and there was a good amount of humour in it. I especially liked Juliet and Ezra’s constant jibes and insults. It was a bit of a running gag. I did notice a couple of repeat phrases, though. I think about a hundred people must have had the corner of their lip twitch, for example. I liked it enough to buy books two and three, so that should tell you something.
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