Category Archives: books/book review

Mothman Reading Challenge

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For someone who has very little time to read, I keep constructing reading challenges for myself. But I like to get them down on paper when they occur to me. So, with that in mind, let me introduce you to my newest reading goal, the Romantic Mothman Challenge.

Yep, it’s totally random. And I’ll tell you how it came to be. But first, let me preface this with the fact that I’ve been very into Monster Romances lately. So, I was a little predisposed toward a cryptid challenge in the first place.

mothman challenge

Ok, it started when I innocently downloaded a copy of Emory Moon‘s Canary and the Mothman from a Bookfunnel event. Then I got an email saying I’d won a copy of Paige Lavoie‘s I’m in Love With Mothman. (I don’t even remember entering the giveaway. So, that was a complete bonus.)

Two books featuring the Mothman within a day or two of one another got my attention. So, I searched my considerable TBR to see if I had any more. Turns out I did have one—C.M Nascota‘s Sweet Berries. Three Mothman books; now I was well and truly invested.

Then, I picked up Vera Valintine‘s Carnal Cryptids: East Coast in a Stuff Your Kindle freebie event and, finally, I had a few dollars of Amazon cash. So, I bought a copy of Clio Evans‘ Doves & Demons. Though, I bet if I’d been a little more strategic, I could find that one at Hoopla and bought an additional one for the challenge. Too bad I’m thinking of that now.

Speaking of Hoopla, there are two more there that I could borrow. There is Peter Passenger and the Mothman, by Rafe Jadison, and Gateway Mothman, by Jay Noel, which also happens to be set in my city. (I’ve been meaning to do a Saint Louis reading challenge. But picking out all the books set in STL will take a lot more time than I have available.)

There’s also Run & Hide by Beatrix Hollow, which I’m told has Mothman in it but I don’t own, and the Mothman Mysteries. But I meant to go by book titles, not series titles. So, I’m not counting it.

I’m sure that there are quite a few more out there; these are just the ones I currently know about. But I generally form challenges as an incentive to read the books already on my shelves. I’m already stretching a little to include Hoopla books. So, I’m going to limit myself to these seven and only add to the list if the universe tosses another free Mothman book in my path. (Feel free to facilitate that if you know of one. LOL.)

Edit: Well after I’d posted this, Like Mothman to a Flame came up on the freebie list. So, I grabbed it, too.

skulls-Image by minh huynh tan from Pixabay

I decided to bring my reviews back here as updates rather than do a separate challenge wrap-up. so…
Reviews:
her irish treasures banner

Book Review: Her Irish Treasures, by Joely Sue Burkhart

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I picked up a freebie copy of Joely Sue Burkhart‘s Her Irish Treasures from Amazon. It’s a compilation of Shamrocked, Leprechauned, and Evil Eyed.

her irish treasures cover

After I stumble into an Irish bar called Shamrocked, my life will never be the same.

I may have celebrated my divorce a little too hard because I wake up in bed with a gargoyle statue. It takes a lot of coffee and my best friend’s interrogation to recall exactly what happened after I stumbled into an Irish bar. The statue has to be cursed because it keeps moving by itself, and I start dreaming of a man.

Doran. He’s been trapped in stone and darkness for centuries. He tells me I’m the treasurekeeper, and I need to find his friends, the other three legendary Irish treasures: the Spear of Lug, the Sword of Light, and the Cauldron of the Dagda. My only clue to go on is the bar, Shamrocked, but it’s not on any map of Kansas City. If I can find it again… maybe the gargoyle will finally let me sleep in peace.

my review

This review contains a spoiler.

Yawn. That’s my final verdict on this series. The writing is perfectly competent, and I liked the characters well enough, even if their character archetypes are pretty ham-handed. But there isn’t anything special here. Well, except for the heroine, who is just the specialist Special to ever special. As the books went on and more of her mystery was revealed, she progressively became more and more of a Mary Sue. By the end, she was made out to be so perfect and so worshiped that I felt like I should dislike her on principle, just to balance the scales.

But here’s my biggest complaint (after just boredom, by the end). The author denies the reader the most important parts of the plot. The book starts with the heroine waking up with a gargoyle statue in her bed. By chapter two, she’s already well into the mania caused by the statue talking to her. The reader is left out of all this tension building and just told this has been going on for days. Even all the loves are instant (all of them), so you don’t see any build-up there either.

Similarly (and much, much worse), the book ends the same way. She does the big important thing that the whole book has been building up to, passing out in the process (dies, really, and comes back, but same difference). When she wakes up, she asks if they won and is told that she did succeed and everyone lives happily ever after.

her irish treasure photo560 pages trying to best the villain (who was super obvious, btw), and the author chose not to show his defeat or the Treaures’ endings. Honestly, I’m not even sure if the villain was killed or if the heroine merely returned magic to the worlds. Like, I’m legitimately not even sure what winning constitutes in this situation BECAUSE I WAS NOT SHOWN and barely told. To say it was anticlimactic is a complete understatement.

All in all, if you like a Mary Sue, this is a good series for you. But I found it underwhelming, on the whole.

Other Reviews:

La Crimson Femme Review

 

 

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Zero Reviews Challenge.

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I have a new challenge for myself, and this one is a little dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that there is a large potential to be unenjoyable. As such, I’m setting it as a long-term challenge. I don’t have a lot of reading time right now (because of university). So, I’m reluctant to donate any of it to read that I won’t enjoy. Despite that, I still want to try this. (You never know, I might love each of these books, after all.)

What is this? Reading the books on my Goodreads shelves with zero reviews. I was inspired to check this by someone I saw over on Tiktok (that I can’t seem to find again, so I can’t give credit to). But they said that sometimes when they have trouble deciding what to read, they order their books by review numbers and read the book with the fewest. This way, they can give a small-time or new author some attention.

I liked the idea and was somewhat surprised by how many books I have with no reviews. Then I thought about it a little more and was no longer surprised. This is for the same reason that this challenge has the potential to be either a lot of fun or none at all.

You see, I collect signed books. And one of my absolute favorite ways to find them is at charity shops. I always feel like I’m rescuing a book when I buy one from Goodwill or Savers. And sometimes I buy them because they are signed, not because they look good. (Though I try to fight my impulses on this habit.) The problem is that a lot of times, they are actually quite old—from back when self-publishing was still considered vanity publishing, and editing was often iffier than it is today.

Obviously, this isn’t the case for all of them. I am a magpie when it comes to collecting books. They come from everywhere. But the same kind of gotta-collect-them-all mindset accounts for a lot of them. So, while I love owning them, reading them is a real crap shoot. Some have been great, others every bad vanity press stereotype you can imagine. But I alway want to give them a try.

In terms challenge of logistics, I’m going by Goodreads review numbers. So, some of these might have Amazon or other reviews (though I doubt it). I’m not going to take the time to look. Similarly, I suspect some might be re-publications of older books that, if I looked hard enough, I might find history for. But, again, I’m not going to do that work. If it has no reviews on Goodreads and I own it, It qualifies for the challenge.

I’m not going to count anything that is brand new and can, therefore, be expected to garner reviews in the near future. I’m really going to focus on anything older than a year with no current reviews. And I’ll make decisions on books that are later books in a series on a book-by-book basis. The same will go for some of the odd non-fiction (don’t judge).

A lot of these are physical books that have befallen the all too common fate of books in my house. They got put on a shelf, which puts them out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. So, clearing some shelf space is a nice little bonus to the challenge too. But I’ll warn you now, being slotted in, spine out is a blessing for some of these books. There are some bad covers in the lot!

The goal is to list them below, and as I read them (no doubt slowly), I’ll come back and link to the reviews. Wish me luck. I very well might need it.

no reviews challenge books

The Coming of the Light & Piercing the Darkness, by J.W. Baccaro
The Clubhouse, by Frederic W. Baue
The Bones Dance the Foxtrot, by Donan Berg
Good as You, by B.A. Braxton
Feast of Darkness, Part II, by Christian A. Brown
The Queer Magician in Europe, by Brand Doubell
Paracord Knife Handle Wraps, by Jan Dox
Unwilling Bride, by M.J. Drakkon
Lost Faith, by Maia Dylan
Unmarked Trails, by Jane Flink
Cursed, by Athena Floras
Dust of a Moth’s Wing, by R. Ramey Guerrero
Star Crossed, by Eden Hudson
By Light of Phoenix, by Shade Jalo
Tom and Me, by Robert Lowe
Ankle to the Soul, by Shelly McDuffie
To Save My Father’s Soul, by Michael William Molden
The Wisdom Seeker, by Amy Peterson
Corporeal, by Danielle Powers
The Companions, by Michael Rader
Dragon of the Hesperides, by Dean Reavey
Gloaming, by Addison Taylor Rich
Sex, Intimacy, Love, and Romance in Elderly and Alzheimer’s Patients, by Sandy Sanbar & Judy Rector
For the People I Love and Can’t Forget, by Maria Szapszewicz
Gotta Be Down!, by Booker T.
Blood Revenge, by Robert F. Thompson
To Ocean’s End, by S.M. Welles
Reckless Dreams, by J.R. White
Defiled, by Elskidor Xell

So, there you have it. Those are the 29 books I own that Goodreads says have no reviews, the oldest being Tom and Me from 2016. (How can it have no reviews?) I’m fairly sure at least two of the authors have passed, one of which was a local-to-me author. Several are parts of series, the rest of the series’ books have few reviews too. And, honestly, none of them light me on fire with excitement. But that’s part of what makes this a challenge.

As always, you’re welcome to join in. Let me know how it goes.