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Cry Baby Hollow

Book Review of Aimee Love’s Cry Baby Hollow

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Cry Baby Hollow

I grabbed Aimee Love‘s Cry Baby Hollow from the Amazon KDP list recently.

Description from Goodreads:
There are things we all know about werewolves:
-The only way to become a werewolf is to be bitten by one.
-They only come out on the full moon.
-They can only be killed with a silver bullet.
-They are not real.

But when Aubrey Guinn comes to Eastern Tennessee to help Vina, an aging family friend, werewolves are the furthest things from her mind. She is preoccupied with more mundane concerns, like keeping Vina’s ingrate step-children from putting her in a nursing home, avoiding the advances of her handsome but dim witted neighbor, and keeping her mailbox away from the good old boys baseball bats. It isn’t until Aubrey finds the body of a local boy, gruseomely murdered, that she begins to see that life in the country is anything but slow, and werewolves are far from what Hollywood had led her to expect.

Review:
Cry Baby Hollow was a surprisingly good read. I say surprisingly because there are so many werewolf books on the market these days and almost all of them seem to be small variations of the same story. This one is not one of those. For one it isn’t about some dimwitted heroine falling hard for another testosterone crazed alpha wolf. Thank you sweet baby HeyZeus for variety. I would hesitate to even call this paranormal romance, except that it does have paranormal creatures in it and there is some romance. Either way it’s a lot of fun, if a little slow at times.

Ms. Love has created an interesting story, with engaging characters and some true regional humour. I can say that too. I happen to be from Tennessee. There was a lot of genuine southern culture depicted here, but there were a few inevitable stereotypes too. Sadly, there’s often a grain of truth in even them so I can’t fault the book for that.

I did have a few gripes though. While I loved Aubrey’s sharp tongue and quick wit, it didn’t always feel realistic. Old women like Vina can get away with being so acerbic, younger ones haven’t earned the social right yet. On more than one occasion I laughed at some cut down or defiant act of Aubrey’s (’cause they are funny and fist pumpingly “right on”), then thought, ‘what a bitch.’ She was just too quick to jump onto the offence. Plus, since you are given so little of Aubrey’s history upfront it felt a little like all of her considerable skill came unearned. Of course she’s supposed to have spent 10+ years in the Navy. No doubt she worked hard for them, but you don’t feel it.

I loved, loved, loved Joe, but there’s a fairly drastic change in his personality about halfway through the book and I was a little disappointed in that. It was predictable really, but I still much preferred his Good ‘Ol Boy self to his cleaned up self. I also wondered why he knew the area so much better than Aubrey if he’d been vacationing there for 10 years, but she’d been visiting her whole life. Seemed a little backwards.

Lastly, some important events were strangely glossed over: almost anything bedroom related, Aubrey’s days in the hospital which marked a sharp change in the tone of the book, her first training with Vina and pals that allowed her to fight on an even playing field with the baddy. All of them are game changers to the plot, but none of them are given to the reader. Their absence tended to make the events following them feel like abrupt shifts even when they really weren’t.

These are all fairly minor complaints in the grand scheme of things though. I have no hesitation about recommending Cry Baby Hollow book. It’s well worth reading.

Book Review of Thomm Quackenbush’s We Shadows

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We ShadowsAuthor, Thomm Quackenbush, sent me a copy of his novel We Shadows.

Description from Goodreads:
After a year of coasting rather than living, destroyed by her boyfriend Eliot’s death, Shane Valentine matriculates into his college. She begins to build a new life as a college freshman, only to have it stolen from her one night, when she is trying to drown her sorrows at the bottom of a daiquiri.

She wakes the next day in a strange apartment with three scars she can’t remember and a bloody shirt. On her walk of shame in stolen clothes, she realizes that no one aside for her roommate Roselyn, a Wiccan with epilepsy, remembers her. Unfortunately three occultists are after her to fix the mistake they made and they remember her too well.

Gideon, a daemonic being with an penchant for card, finds her and assures her he is going to help her out of his own sense of self-preservation. After a quick trip to the nameless campus drug dealer, whose abilities far exceed the selling of narcotics, Shane begins on an adventure to figure out what was done with her and why, to regain a life she had been wasting in mourning. Then, she begins to see Eliot’s ghosts and realizes even chaos cannot be so cut and dry.

Review:
I have to be honest. I only kinda, sorta, maybe understand what just happened at the end of this book. It feels like things wrapped up, but I don’t actually know what happened. Did she? Didn’t she? Was she? Wasn’t she? Will she? Won’t she? (Ok, now I just sound a bit like Girl.) At best it’s a loose conclusion, though it does conclude. Having said all of that, I quite enjoyed the ride. Quackenbush has developed some really interesting characters in this book. Some I know are poached from various mythologies, but they are all artfully integrated to create an engaging story.

The whole thing just felt a little shallow though. I don’t necessarily mean that as a harsh criticism. The characters had enough depth, there weren’t too many deep plot holes and dialogue flowed well, but for all of the philosophy spouted, decisions made and actions taken very little deep explanation was ever given. It all led to a feeling of gloss…like looking at a water colour where you can clearly see what the picture is despite the fact that the lines are all indistinct and often wobbly. As a result I regularly “only kinda, sorta, maybe understand what just happened.”

Then there was Girl. She’s was very Mad Hatter-like, speaking in enlightened gibberish and riddles…and just in case you don’t immediately note the similarity she liked to quote Carroll and have random tea-parties too. Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of wish I had paid more attention throughout the book. I’d bet there are more than a few Alice in Wonderland references I didn’t catch. Gideon’s penchant for cards could be one. Hookas and ‘who are you’ type conversations abound. Yes, I’ve decided. There is a definite Alice in Wonderland feel to this book. Shane has lost her sense of self, just like little Alice.

Quackenbush is a talented writer, without doubt. The dry, witty humour was worth reading the book for on its own. Shane, for example, very much reminded me of Rory from Gilmore Girls, though there isn’t any real reason for me to make that comparison since the genre’s are so very different. But there just aren’t a lot of characters that could make grammar jokes funny, probably not many authors either.

Review of S.P. Wayne’s Winter Wolf

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Winter Wolf

I grabbed S.P. Wayne‘s M/M romance, Winter Wolf, from the Amazon KDP list.

I would usually include a description at this point, but Winter Wolf‘s is so long it’s practically a short story by itself. So feel free to go here and read it on its Amazon page. I’m not cluttering this post up with it. Seriously, it’s unnecessarily long. Suffice it to say the novella is a sweet werewolf romance with an M/M pairing.

Review:
I’m just going to go ahead and get the biggest criticism out of the way first so that I can spend the rest of this review raving about the book. Winter Wolf needs an editor fairly badly. There are missing and misused words, and though less frequent, grammar mistakes and typos too. Plus, POVs shift at a dizzying pace with little to no warning, so it can sometimes be a little hard to keep up. I have definitely seen worse and it’s not really too hard to figure out what the author actually means, so the text is still readable. But there are too many examples to not point out it in any complete review.

I wish I used star ratings on this blog so that I could say, ‘if it’s bad enough to warrant a mention I often would consider dropping a star for poor editing, but not this time.’  That’s such a simple way to make the point. It’s also true. The story and writing (editing aside) are just too wonderful for anything but 5 stars. Wayne’s style is surprisingly evocative. I actually felt Axton’s skittishness. I ground my teeth for his self denials and my heart ached for his ‘mourning’ periods. He felt incredibly fragile. I didn’t connect as fully with Leander, but the story is told largely from Axton’s POV. There are no other characters.

Axton was also simply a great character. He was noble, honourable, and utterly vulnerable without being wimpy in any way. I loved watching him flounder and then find his proverbial feet. It was nice to see him turn the werewolf genre on it’s hierarchical head. Axton was definitely a beta, or maybe even omega type wolf. There was nothing alpha about him and I don’t remember the last werewolf book I read that wasn’t about an alpha wolf.

This is a really bittersweet story, with a writing style that perfectly matches the characters it describes. I highly recommend it. There seems to be a sequel on the way and I’m a little torn about how to feel about that. So often I’ve continued a series and felt it would have been kinder to the characters to stop at the first one, but I’d also simply love to see more of Ax and Lee. No doubt I’ll read it.