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Book Review: Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop, by Steffanie Holmes

I’m pretty sure I picked up the first book in Steffanie Holmes‘ Nevermore Bookshop as an Amazon freebie. Then, I went back and bought this compilation of the first three books (A Dead and Stormy Night, Of Mice and Murder, Pride and Premeditation) so that I could continue the series. (I’m trying to focus more on series at the moment since my reading time is limited. I want to know going in that I’ll be able to reach an ending and a conclusion.)

What do you get when you cross a cursed bookshop, three hot fictional men, and a punk rock heroine nursing a broken heart?

You get the Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries – where all your book boyfriends come to life.

When Mina Wilde’s ex-best friend shows up dead with a knife in her back, she’ll have to solve the murder if she wants to clear her name. Will Heathcliff, Moriarty and Quoth the Raven be able to keep her out of prison?

More importantly, will she be able to keep her hands off the three fictional men who’ve taken up residence in her bookshop… and her heart.

Agatha Christie meets Black Books in this steamy paranormal romance. Join a brooding antihero, a master criminal, a cheeky raven, and a heroine with a big heart (and an even bigger book collection) in this brand new steamy reverse harem mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Steffanie Holmes.

This collection includes books 1-3 in the Nevermore Bookshop series, plus Heathcliff’s shop rules, and alternative POV scenes from Mina’s heroes. Read on only if you believe one book boyfriend isn’t enough.

When I write reviews for books in a series, sometimes I write a review for each individual book, and sometimes I write a single review that encompasses all the books (more accurately, a review of the series). For this series, however (or at least these first three books in the series), I think I could write reviews, and they would be the same for each book. A single review could be posted interchangeably for each one. I feel like there is that little difference between these three books. The murder victims changed, but that’s about it.

I did think that the author handled Mina’s impending blindness well. I felt her fear, frustration, and uncertainty. She had personal growth around the issue. And so far, there hasn’t been any magical cure, and I don’t see one on the horizon. So, that’s a plus. I also simply liked Mina herself. And I thought the writing was quite readable.

However, I never really came to love the men. I liked them, OK, but that’s about it. What’s more. While the murder mysteries were fine, I chose the series for the fantasy elements and the romance. Other than the fantastical existence of the men and the bookshop themselves (and Morri’s ability to hack with his phone), the fantasy elements were fairly light. And the romance was definitely a slow-moving subplot. Both of these are fine, but not what I was looking for. So, the result was that I was often bored.

All in all, I think this is a fine series that just wasn’t a great match for me.

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Isabella August Reviews: Dead and Story Night

Book Review: Olivia and the Orc, by Honey Phillips

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I was feeling a little sassy the other night and picked up a freebie copy of Olivia and the Orc (by Honey Phillips) from Amazon.

An orc guard. A kidnapped human. A treacherous journey…

The last thing Olivia remembers is celebrating a friend’s birthday. The next thing she knows, she and her friends are being marched across an alien desert by a gang of small lizardmen – and one very large and forbidding green alien.

He looks like a terrifying orc, but when they’re separated from the rest of the group, the fierce alien is the only one who can keep her safe. He can’t speak a word of her language, but there are other ways to communicate…

Baldric’s job as a guard for a caravan of Sleestik merchants is just the kind he likes – simple and uncomplicated. Until they discover a cache of precious females. The Sleestik plan to sell them, but he is equally determined to protect them – especially the small curvy female with the fiery hair of the goddess.

When a tragic accident leaves them isolated, he sees no alternative but to seek the assistance of the tribe he left so many years ago. But will his people be willing to help him? And even if they are, how can he return Olivia to her friends when all he wants to do is keep her with him forever?

I finished this last week and apparently forgot to review it. I rather suspect that I finished this last week and simply immediately forgot it. It’s not that the book is necessarily bad. It’s just that nothing about it stood out as special, and much of it annoyed me.

I’ll start with a positive. Baldric is marvelous. He’s kind and patient and trying to do the right thing.

Olivia, however, annoyed me from start to finish. And mostly, it was the author’s fault rather than hers. It was the author who decided to make her go off and repeatedly do things too stupid to be believable.

I recently heard a quote that said, “I don’t need my fantasy to be realistic, but I do need it to be believable.” The idea is that I need to be able to read it and now be pulled out of the story too often with “I don’t believe that character would do that.”

This was the problem with Olivia. She impulsively ran off in suicidal endeavors so often that I grew to hate her. (The final straw was when she did so because she saw Baldric speak to another woman. The instant, ‘I’m jealous, going to misunderstand, and not speak to anyone before doing something monumentally stupid and suicidal’ stank so strongly of authorial manipulation of a plot and character that I literally almost DNFed the book).

All in all, I didn’t hate the book. I just hated the heroine. I might be willing to give other books in the series a try if I could find legitimately free copies. I don’t think I’d spend money on them.

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