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Book Review of The Deep of the Sound, by Amy Lane

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Deep of the SoundI received a copy of The Deep of the Sound, by Amy Lane, from NetGalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Cal McCorkle has lived in Bluewater Bay his whole life. He works two jobs to support a brother with a laundry list of psychiatric diagnoses and a great uncle with Alzheimer’s, and his personal life amounts to impersonal hookups with his boss. He’s got no time, no ambition, and no hope. All he has is family, and they’re killing him one responsibility at a time.

Avery Kennedy left Los Angeles, his family, and his sleazy boyfriend to attend a Wolf’s Landing convention, and he has no plans to return. But when he finds himself broke and car-less in Bluewater Bay, he’s worried he’ll have to slink home with his tail between his legs. Then Cal McCorkle rides to his rescue, and his urge to run away dies a quick death.

Avery may seem helpless at first, but he can charm Cal’s fractious brother, so Cal can pretty much forgive him anything. Even being adorkable. And giving him hope. But Cal can only promise Avery “until we can’t”—and the cost of changing that to “until forever” might be too high, however much they both want it.

I don’t usually include a series description, but this one is pretty interesting and gives some insight into the series that i wasn’t aware of when I picked this book up.  So, here is the series description for Bluewater Bay.

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by ten award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield, Aleksandr Voinov, Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, and G.B. Gordon. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landing media empire.

Review:

Well darn, this is the second book in as many weeks that I’ve finished and then discovered it’s part of a series. That really annoys me. On the plus side, if I made it all the way to the end without realizing it, it must be encapsulated enough to stand alone. So, I’m annoyed that the fact that it’s an eighth book in a series wasn’t made more apparent on the cover, or where ever, but I don’t think it effected my read any.

This was my first Amy Lane book and a lot of people seem to love her writing. And while I appreciate a lot about this novel, thought the writing and editing were sharp, etc, I thought the story was far too schmaltzy for my taste. And I have two main reasons for this.

The first is the insta-meaningful relationship. Sure, it’s not insta-love but almost immediately these two men are moving beyond sex or friendship or even getting to know one another into ‘you complete my life’ territory. They then spend an inordinate amount of time telling each-other how wonderful and vital to the other they are.

Second, I just basically hate PSAs in my fiction. I just do. If there are certain issues that are important to the story and a reader needs to know them to understand, sure ok, drop a few facts. But I HATE it when authors use their books as a platform to inform readers on how to be better humans in regard to XYZ. It feels unnatural, pompous and presumptuous. It’s even worse when they do it serially. Lane hits Communicatively Handicapped, FanFiction communities/writing, Gender queers’ pronouns and probably more.

Sure, one character was ADHD, OCD, bi-polar etc. I didn’t feel lectured at because of his diagnosis. Nor did I feel lectured on about the Great Uncle’s Alzheimer’s and only a little about the importance of medication. This just proves to me that important social issues can be handled and included in non-PSA ways. But when Avery lectured Cal (a man who’s lived his whole life and is currently responsible for the care and upkeep of a severely diagnosed brother), and by extension me on CH or that all that’s really important about pronouns is respect it held none of that natural importance to the story. (The latter was about a character that never even shows up in the book.)

My problem is not that I disagree with the message, it’s seeing (or feeling rather) it shoehorned into a story. To me it comes across as an author being like, ‘See how informed and accepting I am? Yes, praise me for my liberal open-mindedness.’ I’m not saying Lane is like this. I don’t know. But I certainly felt this in this book and found it really off-putting.

Having said all that, it was a very sweet story. I liked the characters in general and the writing is perfectly readable.

Onyx Webb

Book Review of Onyx Webb (Book 1), by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz

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Onyx WebbAuthor, Andrea Waltz sent me, not only a copy of her and Richard Fenton’s book, but a whole ‘blogger kit.’ This was a novel way to promote their book. Having just written a ranty post about some authors putting no effort into a request, I was honestly impressed to find the other end of the spectrum.

Onyx Webb blogger kit

The coffee much shows they’ve paid particular care to the tendency of book bloggers. I may not know them all, but I know very few who don’t regularly post pictures of books and hot beverages. They just go so well together. See, I even used mine (cinnamon tea, if you’re curious).

See, I even used mine

I do have to address the obvious (or maybe not so obvious), since my husband’s laughing response to my daughter when she asked why someone sent me a packages with candy in it (the rock candy was the only item in the box she cared about) was, “Someone sent her a bribe.”

I’m laughing too, but it’s a legitimate comment. So for the record, I sat down to read the book with the intention of pulling no punches, of being as honest about my opinion of it as I am with any other book, free coffee mug or not. However, I will openly admit that seeing how much effort they put into promoting it, I did feel obligated to ensure it sat at the top of my review pile.

What’s the book about:
– It’s June, 1980 and piano prodigy, Juniper Cole is on the way to her senior prom.

– It’s January 2010, and Koda Mulvaney has blown through his 20 million dollar trust fund and is told by his father to return home and get to work.

– It’s August, 1904 and little Onyx Webb is on her way to the famous World’s Fair in St. Louis with her father, Catfish.

Two of the three will see a ghost, one will become a ghost and everyone will learn that life is hard to let go of even when you’re dead. And that’s just Book One. Designed to read like a supernatural soap opera, Onyx Webb is a paranormal suspense series, with supernatural romance, as well as a dash of historical fiction. The stories may haunt you, the darkness may disturb you, but ultimately you’ll be reminded to treasure every moment of your life because… If you think life is precious now? Just wait until you’re dead.

What did I think:
If you could see me, I’d be holding my hand up and rocking it back and forwards in a see-saw movement meaning, so-so. I thought the writing was simplistic, but good. The characters had distinct voices. The editing was clean. The idea was interesting and the authors balanced an impressive numbers of threads that look to be weaving together eventually. An impressive feet when you’re covering over 100 years.

However, we’re all individual readers and we all have literary qualities we do and don’t like. For me two things I’m not hugely fond of is vignettes and leaping back and forwards in time. Unfortunately, that is exactly what this book is. It’s set up so that you follow three primary character arcs in three different eras. What’s more, we were given very brief snippets, sometimes only a page or two for each one before leaping briefly to another and so on.

I can see what the authors were going for with this narrative choice. It was like getting little tastes of something larger. But, for me, it resulted in not being able to sink into the story, as I was always yanked back out with the changing focus.

Similarly, I’m not sure I followed the need for this to be written in episodes. (Unless it was originally written as a serial or something.) The overall impression I was given—from the too-brief chunks of character POVs, having the story broken into episodes and the unusually large number of new, or previously unimportant, characters being introduced late in the book—was that of disconnection. Like these are all puzzle pieces, but they’re all still in the box, yet to be put together.

I did think a few of the characters were a little heavy on their character’s characteristic. They were almost caricatures of their type of person—the rich playboy who doesn’t know the value of money, the cajun bayou man, etc. And I have to admit I thought the pictures felt a little gimmicky.

Lastly, for those to whom such things matter, there does seem to be a religious, or at least spiritual, theme being established in the storyline.

All in all, an interesting read that I think will appeal to the right reader.

Book Review of Full Blooded (Jessica McClain, #1), by Amanda Carlson

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Full BloodedI bought an ecopy of Full Blooded, by Amanda Carlson.

Description from Goodreads:
Born the only female in an all male race, Jessica McClain isn’t just different—she’s feared.

After living under the radar for the last twenty-six years, Jessica is thrust unexpectedly into her first change, a full ten years late. She wakes up and finds she’s in the middle of a storm. Now that she’s become the only female full-blooded werewolf in town, the supernatural world is already clamoring to take a bite out of her and her new Pack must rise up and protect her.

But not everyone is on board. The werewolf Rights of Laws is missing text and the superstitious werewolves think that Jessica means an end to their race. It doesn’t help when Jessica begins to realize she’s more. She can change partway and hold her form, and speak directly to her wolf. But the biggest complication by far is that her alpha father can’t control her like he can the rest of his wolves.

When a mercenary who’s been hired by the vampires shows up to extract information about the newly turned werewolf only days after her change, they find themselves smack in the middle of a war and there’s no choice but to run together. When it’s up to Jessica to negotiate her release against her father’s direct orders, she chooses to take an offer for help instead. In exchange, Jessica must now swear an oath she may end up repaying with her life.

Review:
I thought this was ok. There were things I liked, like Jessica’s insistence on independence and the way Rourke went all desperate and weak-kneed at toward the end, not to mention needing rescue. But while I found the latter half of this amusing and would read more of the series, I wasn’t overly impressed.

One of my number one dialogue pet peeves is when characters say each-other’s name all the time. Think on it; if you’re having a conversation with someone, especially if it’s just the two of you alone, how often do you say their name? Maybe once, in the beginning to get their attention, if even then. In this book these characters used a direct address or name in almost every interaction, sometimes multiple times in the same brief conversation. It drove me absolutely crazy. It just feels so very unnatural.

There is non-stop action in this book and, while action is good, it prevents boredom, there is no downtime in this book and I think it needed some. The characters needed a breather here or there, so that the reader could take a moment to digest. You’re never given any time for big reveals to settle before the book whizzes off to something else, denying the moment any gravitas.

It’s also a cliffhanger. True, it’s not a precipitous as some of them I’ve encountered and I don’t mind some open threads to carry over into a next book, but nothing really wraps up in the story, which annoys me in general, but is especially annoying when the ebook is $8.99 (a new paperback is only $5.20). Seems a little expensive for just part of a story, and that’s honestly all this is.