Tag Archives: Blood Moon

Book Review of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash

I picked up a copy of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash, from Amazon. It was free at the time.

Description from Goodreads:
Haidee had a bright future ahead of her, that was until she was viciously attacked in the Never North forest. With a single breath of life left in her lungs she is found by a strikingly gorgeous man. With hope in her heart that this mysterious stranger will save her life, she is dumbfounded when she sees his fangs appear. With Haidee buried alive in the forest she fights for freedom, but when the sun burns her skin she fears that her worst thought is true. She has been turned into a vampire. But soon she will realize that she is no ordinary vampire, she is the chosen one and is sent on a mission by her mistress to kill the leader of the only werewolf pack left in existence. But as she finds herself distracted on her journey the fate of everyone’s lives soon rests in the palm of her hands.

Review:
Wow, that was shockingly bad. The book starts out with this TSTL move on the main character’s part.

Following my usual trail, just as I’d done many times before, my basket gently swayed comfortably on my arm. While I walked, I pictured just how beautiful my sisters would look with mauve bellflower weaved through their braids. Drifting into a daydream, I soon found that I’d lost my bearings and had roamed much further into the forest than I’d intended.

In one short paragraph, the author manages to tell us the girl knows her way, but then gets her lost. What’s more, how stupid does she have to be to wander far past the route she’s supposed to KNOW and end up in a part of the forest called the Never North that she and everyone else is afraid of?

The book had a serious case of, oh-so-special for no apparent reason. Haidee was apparently beautiful, smart, strong, alluring, her blood was sweeter than anyone else, and everyone desires her. She was given power and position for no reason and with no effort. She was too perfect.

The book then just basically turns into a list of fed from/had sex with this person and that person and that one too, interspersed with small snippets of story. She went from virgin to having sex several times a day with no time in between. Maybe this was supposed to be erotica. I say maybe because I’m really not sure. It isn’t, but the character had enough sex for it to be. Until she fell in love with a man she literally hadn’t even had a conversation with.

There were also all sorts of oddities, like her being buried overnight to become a vampire, but never needing to bath afterwards. There also wasn’t a point in which it could have happened and the author simply not mentioned it. Or up until 53% the setting was women in long dresses and cloaks, horses, bows/arrows, candles, and prudish women in teashops. I understandably assumed it was a historical setting. Then, suddenly, Haidee’s talking about her car running our of gas and getting a ride from someone. I honestly believe the author wrote it as a historical and then lost track of the story. That’s how it felt!

The whole thing was full amateurish writing. The narrator’s voice damn near killed me. The writing makes me think the author is very young, though I don’t know if that’s true.

There was an overuse and often inappropriate use of adverbs (other words too, but the adverbs really stood out). Plus, everything seemed to be pulsating, throbbing or pounding. Beyond that, the grammar was just a mess in general. Haidee’s name was used too often in conversations. There was no character development, in fact a large number of them never even speak. They were just there to highlight Haidee’s perfect, desirable self.

I’ll be honest. If I hadn’t been reading this for a challenge, I wouldn’t have finished it. I wouldn’t even have made 20%. It was quite frankly horrible. I’m not even going to pull that punch. That had to be the longest 98 pages of my life. I’d never been so happy to have an ebook end at the 80% mark!

Book Review of Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1), by Silver James

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So, there I was, reading the second book in my Blood Moon Challenge (Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1), by Silver James) and I realized I’d read it before. It took 5% for me to be certain, but eventually I was. Oddly, I see no evidence that I posted a review here for it. So, I’m going to go ahead and rectify that, but I don’t suppose it counts as a legitimate challenge read.

I picked the book up on Amazon, when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Army Major Hannah Jackson knows where the skeletons are hidden at the Pentagon and now she’s been tasked with keeping the secrets of Army Special Sci Ops Unit 69—the Wolves—and their secret is a doozy. That a civilian corporation wants to exploit the Wolves is a matter of pressing concern.

Sergeant Major Ian McIntire doesn’t trust Hannah as far as he can throw her—and that’s quite a ways considering he’s an alpha werewolf. The woman is a pain in his butt and with the Blood Moon coming, the unit needs to complete their mission and get home before tempers flare. While she might know most of their secrets, the one she doesn’t know about the moonstruck Wolf might just get them all killed.

When a covert operation goes wrong, Mac must trust Hannah to save his men—and his heart. Secrets, lies, and betrayals are more personal under the full moon, but when a Wolf loves a woman, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Review:
This novella started off so well…and then went to total shit. In the beginning we’re introduced to sexy Alpha among Alphas, Mac and the sexy, capable, strong-willed Hannah. Everything was looking good. I was loving the narrative predominantly from Mac’s POV and thrilled to be reading about a heroine who was competing on par and impressing all the type A, military men. You go girl!

Then about 25% through the book the sexual tension cranked up and Hannah’s IQ dropped by about 50 points, as did her sense of balance and calm. All of a sudden she was scared and crying every 10 minutes, stumbling over tree roots (where before Mac had been impressed with her ability to soldier on unaided), and bordering on hysterics for all of the rest of the story. And no, for the record, just because he tells her repeatedly that she’s strong and resilient doesn’t actually make her so. It’s condescending and pat.

I get that she had a bit of a shock. Totally get that. But why did she have to become so very weak in order for his masculinity to come through? He would still have been plenty manly even if she didn’t fall to pieces. I sure didn’t see any of the men crying over a little gun fight.

The story also felt very much like the middle of a longer piece. There is obvious history with Hannah and her job with the military and the Wolves’ need to rescue Torjak. Then there is a lot left unexplored on the return to Virginia. Not once did Mac and Hannah manage a normal, rational conversation about their future. I would have liked to know how that was addressed.

I had a hard time looking past Hannah’s crumbling facade. It ruined the story for me. But I did find that I liked the writing style a lot. The POVs shifted a bit too quickly at times, but that was easily looked over. I also thought the basic structure of the world Silver James created was interesting. It was only thinly sketched out, but I saw the possibility of some entertaining future books in it. I’d be willing to give another one of her stories a shot.

Book Review of Blood Moons (The Blood Series #1), by Alianne Donnelly

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I picked up a copy of Blood Moons, by Alianne Donnelly, from Amazon when it was free. I read it as the first in my Blood Moon Reading Challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
They say no good deed ever goes unpunished, a sentiment Dara understands fully now that she is paying for a crime she didn’t commit. It was stupid to call in a murder she didn’t really see. But how could Dara have kept silent? Now a stunning—scratch that, a dangerous—man with a frightening secret of his own is telling her he can help. Yeah, right. A telepath knows better than to trust mere words.

The last decade of Tristan’s life has been penance. All that time spent among the worst dregs of society might have made him begin to question his humanity, but he’s never felt so much like an animal as he does around this timid, delicate female. Her very presence stirs the beast within him; Tristan can feel it growing stronger every day. Any more time with Dara, and it might overpower him completely. But without her, he stands no chance at all…

Review:
I had problems with this book. It wasn’t the writing. That was fine. It wasn’t the idea behind the plot. That was fine. It wasn’t the dialogue. That too was fine. It was the fact that the first third is basically just ‘let’s protect the fragile heroine from being raped in this unbelievably vile, but oddly sterile prison with a gender ration of 4 women to 200 evil, evil men that the reader never sees or feels the threat of’ and the last two-thirds rambles on and on forever. This book needed an editor. Not for typos and grammar mistakes, I never noticed any, but for someone to tell the author to cut a third of the length and tighten the plot a lot.

I also thought the characters, Dara especially, were very shallow and did things that were not only too stupid to believe, but often out of character. Like volunteering for maximum security prison with the most violent offenders (because you usually get to choose your level, apparently) despite being innocent and as fragile as glass or leaving the person you are so protective of that you literally guard her from passer-bys on the street alone when there have been legitimate threats against her.

Close, but no cigar for me.