Hunter Moon

Book Review of Cait Lavender’s Hunter Moon

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Hunter Moon

I grabbed Hunter Moon, by Cait Lavender, from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Bawling cattle tore Shelby Flint from her bed. With lawyer fees to pay in her struggle to keep her ranch from the clutches of her greedy cousins, she couldn’t afford the loss of even one calf. When she sees a large wolf circling her cows, she aims and fires. While the wolf escapes, Shelby can’t seem to get away from her troubles when a marijuana grower sets up shop on her land, sabotaging her property and eventually coming after her. Adding to that, a handsome game warden is poking his nose into her business and working his way underneath her skin. Shelby will have to fight harder than she ever fought before to keep from losing heart and everything she ever loved.

Review:
I really quite enjoyed Hunter Moon. I found Shelby’s prickly cowgirl persona appealing. I liked her sarcastic narration (even if it was largely in first person). Cash was sexy and protective without falling over into overbearing territory too often and I adored his exposed, vulnerable moments. The side characters were colourful, the writing easy to read, and it was really quite clean. There was a lot of sexual tension, but no actual sex. All-in-all a satisfying read.

A lot of page-time was dedicated to describing what Shelby owned, especially in the beginning (vehicles, animals, guns, guns, and more guns). I found this distracting, but at the same time I also appreciated that it made it apparent that she was of a normal socio-economic strata. She lived in a trailer instead of a quaint cabin. She had more than one car/truck, but they were as old as her. She owned a ranch, but wasn’t making bank with it. She seemed normal in this respect. I sometimes feel like normal is a rare bird in fantasy. (Who wants to read about the norm after all?) But in this case I liked it. It made her more relatable. Which was good because I couldn’t really relate to the gun crazed cowgirl that she was the rest of the time. I liked her, but couldn’t relate to her.

I did feel like the three primary threads (romance, mystery, and family/legal drama) didn’t really weave together. I kept waiting for them to and had even decided how it was most likely to happen, but it never did. However, they may come together later in the series. In once sense this is good. I would be calling the plot out as predictable if it did, but as it stands the whole family/legal drama seemed unnecessary. It didn’t seem to contribute to the story much.

The book ends on a cliffhanger. [I’m getting so tired of reading books that don’t end.] It’s not as precipitous as some I’ve come across, but there is obvuously more to come. I looked into buying the sequel as soon as I finished this one, which is solid evidence I enjoyed Hunter Moon. The problem is that the next one, Cowboy Moon, appears to be a prequel instead a sequel, is very short, AND is also a cliffhanger. Serial cliffhangers are something I avoid. As much as I enjoyed this book and would like to know what happens to Shelby next I don’t know that I’ll read anymore.

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Book Review: The Shadowed Valley, by Y.I. Lee

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I was sent a copy of The Shadowed Valley by the author Y.I. Lee.
the shadowed valley cover

In The Shadowed Valley, nothing is quite what it seems. What Celia faces here is worse than anything she experienced in the land of Dauthus. The evil residing in the valley messes with your mind.

My Review:
The Shadowed Valley is a Christian novel. It is definitely an allegory of God’s continued dominion over Satan and a reaffirmation of the power of faith. It does this very well. While I wasn’t initially aware of its religious bent, I also wasn’t particularly bothered by it. But it does mean that I am not the intended audience. I, for example, found the continued assertion that someone else will always save you if you are just willing to place yourself wholly under their protection cloying, even if that someone is the personification of the Lord. This isn’t a criticism of the novel itself but rather an artifact of its appeal to a particular audience. There are those who will find such reminders of heavenly accompaniment familiar and enjoy the book more for it. The story is straightforward and easily followed. Someone looking for an enjoyable novel situated within the Biblical arena would likely enjoy this book.

Review of Ripley Patton’s Ghost Hand

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Ghost HandI recently ‘met’ Ripley Patton through Goodreads, over our mutual appreciation of Mary Holland‘s writing. I’ve had her novel Ghost Hand floating around in Kindleland for a while now (she sent it to me some time prior for review), so I thought I’d give it a read. We obviously have similar taste in books after all.

Description:
Olivia Black just discovered that her ghost hand, a rare birth defect, can do more than light up a room. It can reach into people and pull things out. Things from the darkest depths of the human psyche never meant to exist in this world. 

Olivia can pickpocket the soul. 

But she can’t control her ability, or the strange items it extracts, and the only thing between Olivia and the men bent on taking the power of her hand is a boy she barely knows and doesn’t trust.

Review:
Ghost Hand really shouldn’t be a book I enjoyed as much as I did. I’ve had rotten luck with YA novels lately and I generally dislike first person narratives. (I spend too much time wondering why they’re telling their story in the first place.) But I did like it and I’ll tell you what makes it such a good book in my opinion. It’s the fact that even if geared toward young adults and regularly reminding the reader that the characters are in their teens, Olivia and Marcus behave in a mature, rational manner. Yes, their limited by their adolescence. They can’t always assert their will over their parent’s for example, but that doesn’t mean they have to act like children. And they don’t. I liked that about them.

Their characterisations were interesting too. Olivia seemed to fall somewhere between a Goth and an Emo (which I haven’t seen in too many books), without feeling overly dark. She was witty and sarcastic, both in her dialogue and her narrations. Marcus, was your basic militant hero with a wounded past, but he felt approachable and realistic. There was a little of the classic YA distraction between the two of them. Things like Olivia being overly aware of his biceps while in mortal danger, but it is a YA novel after all. Hormones will do that to you I suppose.

My only real complaints are that what PSS actually is was left a little vague. Is it the medical term for people with appendages like Olivia’s, the actual hand, or some sort of energy residing within? This lack of clarity didn’t effect the pleasure of the story, but I was left scratching my head a little. And I would have liked a little more closure in the Olivia/Sophia situation. As this is the first in a series I know there is time for that to happen, but it felt unfinished in that regard. Speaking of series, it’s worth pointing out that Ghost Hand has a satisfying wrap up before ending. It’s also well written and well edited.