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Dark Indiscretions

Book Review of Dark Indiscretions (Dark Indiscretions #1), by Shakuita Johnson

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Dark IndiscretionsI downloaded a copy of Dark Indiscretions, by Shakuita Johnson, from the Amazon free list. 

Description from Goodreads:
What happens when your whole family is scarier than any nightmare and you have no desire to be anything like them? Do you stay and go along with the family plans or do you rebel and have them possibly turn their viciousness on you?

Jennifer Johnston experiences first hand why whispers are spoken in the dark about her species’ being evil when she was just a century old. What should have been another family dinner spent arguing over why she didn’t want to keep the bloodlines “pure” by being married off to her older brother turned into a nightmare and left her with more than tortured memories.

Jackson Dawls and Taylor Durham had been pack mates, best friends, and the other’s mate for as long as they could remember. They were a deadly species all their own but even they feared the Mystics and their overly cruel and barbaric ways, but unforeseen circumstances bring them face to face with not one but a few. Will there lives be in danger or is something great and unexpected awaiting them?

They also have to stay under the radar of the human society that is set out to destroy those they believe to be “Tarnished” and a danger to mankind.

When the three meet long ago secrets are brought to the light. Secrets no one but Jennifer knew. Not only do they have to learn to get along with each other because they are fated, someone is also stalking Jennifer and preforming sinister acts without her being any the wiser.

Jennifer must seek guidance from old acquaintances and form alliances with those she never thought she would. She is met with riddles and startling revelations that she never would have imagined possible.

Will they accept their fates and work together or will old fears destroy their lives? Will Jennifer be able to reclaim what was taken from her right from under her nose?

Review:
Years ago, when my husband and I were young and had time for such things, we used to enjoy something called Good Wine/Bad Movie night. It was exactly as the name implies. We would take turns picking out a good bottle of wine and a bad movie. The idea being the better the wine was, the worse the movie could be. We had a lot of fun on such nights. You couldn’t take the drack we were watching seriously (serious B grade sci-fi was a favourite), but when paired with high quality alcohol you would have been laughing at it too. It was fun.

If Dark Indiscretions was a movie, it would have been a prime contender to pair with an excellent Côtes de Bordeaux. It’s bad. I mean, really bad. I wish I used star ratings here so that I could say that the only reason I’m not giving this a one star is because it’s so bad it trips over into the ‘so super-bad it’s funny’ category and since I’m the sort who enjoys staying awake to watch the cheesy late-night fantasy fair I actually got a kick out of this.

I cringed at the writing. The dialogue just about killed me. The plotting was a disaster. The editing was MIA. The character development was nonexistent. The sex was brutally blunt, brusque even. The POVs and tenses were erratic at best. But it was like a train wreck I just couldn’t look away from. Not once did I consider putting it down and not finishing it. I was too busy being amused at it’s horridness.

I highlighted a number of examples that I had intended to include here, but I think at this point it might just seem cruel. Instead, I’ll link to my Amazon highlights. And despite my assertion that the book is a rolling disaster, I’d still recommend it to people like me who enjoy a good cheese-fest on occasion, maybe a little WTFery thrown in on the side. This is the book for you.

Book Review of Toni LoTempio’s No Rest for the Wicca

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I grabbed Toni LoTempio‘s PNR novel, No Rest for the Wicca, from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free. I’ve included two covers because I intend to address them later in the review. The grey is from Goodreads, and the red is from Amazon.

No Rest for the Wicca No Rest for the Wicca

Description from goodreads:
Communing with the dead is an everyday occurrence for PI Morgan Hawkes. A half-Wiccan witch who can commune with spirits of those caught between worlds, Morgan uses her talents to exorcise the trapped ghost or demon as part of the Paranormal Investigation Squad – until a string of murders with a voodoo slant prompts the Special Forces Agency to ask for her assistance. Someone’s killing pureblood witches- and the SFA’s convinced Morgan’s heritage (her father was a voodoo priest) could be instrumental in solving the mystery. Teamed with dashing SF agent Cole St. John – an Inheritor Vampire that sets her blood racing – the two of them fight their attraction for each other as they race to stop a madman from unleashing a demonic force upon the world.

Review:
I got a couple of good chuckles out of No Rest for the Wicca. Morgan was a fun character who managed to pull off the tough snark without pushing it over into the suicidal diarrhea mouth so many such characters have. I enjoyed her, her desire do the right thing, her intelligence and her backbone, maybe not so much her tendency toward alcoholism and self-destructive behaviour. But a few quirks make a character more interesting.

I also enjoyed the mystery here too. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out, but it wasn’t super obvious either. However, Morgan didn’t seem to have to do much investigating to solve it. She just needed to present herself, and people handed her all the information she needed. As an example, she met one of the suspects once (never even had a conversation with him, she was picking up a dropped pencil), and he offered her an assistantship. Now, anyone who’s been to university and tried for an apprenticeship knows this isn’t at all realistic, but even in fiction, it’s a little too easy of an in. What’s more there was one particular side-character who essentially laid every clue she could need at her feet with almost no prompting and without suspecting why Morgan would be asking such questions. Too easy!

As was the fact that the main villain, who managed to spend years carefully planning the whole thing, suddenly lost all composure and got sloppy as soon as Morgan came on the scene. How do heroines do this to bad guys so often? I’ve never figured this out, no matter how often I read it in novels.

A lot has already been made in previous reviews of the whole half-wiccan/half-voodoo thing. So I won’t go on about it, but I’ll admit it threw me for a loop too. At one point, the half-vampire compares the two of them as the same, but I’m still lost as to how someone who is half biologically something (a species) can be the same as someone who is half socially something (a religion). In the end, I just had to tell myself I’ve read tons of fantasy with elves, fairies, witches, sorcerers, vampires, werewolves, etc, as races/species, and it works. So, if LoTempio wants to call them Wiccans instead, I can force that in the same vein.

There was a light romance as a subplot. However, IMHO it really needed to be played up more and made a more important part of the plot or dropped. Half-assed as it was, it’s just a distraction. Granted, Cole was sexy (except for the whole ‘My Dear’ thing that totally didn’t match his character and was exceptionally annoying), and I liked him a lot. But the romance didn’t seem to contribute anything to the story. I was left wondering what that was about. Plus, the whole 25-year-old virgin was ridiculous, considering how easily she gave it up. It felt like a needless attempt to conform to outdated social dictates of acceptable behaviour (good girls remain chaste).

There were some serious editing issues. There were missing words, misspelled words and passages like this one: “He swung his long legs out in front of him. “What I’m proposing is this—“ he swung his long legs out in front of him. “You and I go…” How many legs does this man have? It was distracting, but the book was still readable. I don’t think it was bad enough to pass the book up for.

Finally, a note on covers, and I promise I’m not trying to be mean. I’ve seen two Kindle covers for this book, and they’re both ATROCIOUS, but more to the point, don’t match the book. The first being the grey one with a woman with straight blond streaked hair and scary long fingernails. But the character is described as having curly black hair, and as she’s quite active, I can’t see the nails working out. So, who’s on the cover? The second is even worse (though a more attractive cover, I’ll admit). It’s the red one with the scantily clad woman in lingerie waving a deck of tarot around. However, the main character is described as a virgin, and as there is only one rather mild sex scene, how exactly does that erotica-like cover match the book? It doesn’t, and it is doing a disservice to the author. I would suggest one of the cartooned covers like one sees on H.P. Mallory‘s, Rose Pressey‘s, or Robyn Peterman‘s books. I think it would match the genre better. Only my opinion, though, of course, and I mention this so that others who know the genre will more accurately know what to expect.

So, I finally thought…it was a fun read. It had a few issues, but nothing that would prevent me from recommending it to PNR/UF readers.

Hope’s Daughter

Book Review of Hope’s Daughter (The Ambrosia Sequence #1), by Melanie Cusick-Jones

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Hope's DaughterAuthor, Melanie Cusick-Jones sent me an ecopy of her book Hope’s Daughter.

Description from Goodreads:
Life should be simple for Cassie.

For the small population of Earth survivors who live on the Space Station Hope everything they do is planned and scheduled, down to the cyclical food menus, their roles in the station, even how many children they have.

Despite rigid controls directing her life, Cassie feels more out of synch than ever and worries she won’t find a place for herself within the station community. Perhaps that’s because she’s hearing things inside her head that can’t possibly be real. Or maybe it’s the regular elopements of her peers, heading off to a romantic future in the Married Quarter of the space station, whilst she’s never even been attracted to a boy – no matter how hard her best friend Ami pushes them at her. Then there are the odd questions her work placement partner Balik keeps raising. His questions are just as troubling for her as his distracting smiles and eyes that seem to see inside her.

As Cassie draws closer to Balik she finds that everything else in her life begins to shift. He tells her things that call into question the system they live within. She can’t believe he is right, but at the same time she finds it hard to deny the sincerity of his ideas. Could there be a connection between Cassie’s problems and Balik’s questions? The truth will drag them both to a terrifying and deadly conclusion beyond anything they could have imagined.

Review:
I really rather enjoyed Hope’s Daughter. It is a romantic YA sci-fi novel. However, the emphasis should be very strongly placed on romantic. For much of the book it is the primary focus. In fact, the plot doesn’t really travel far from the romantic for a good 50% or so of the book. There are just sci-fi hints dropped in amongst the romance. It’s also a very YA romance—lots of angst and self doubt and then lots of complete dedication to that same love. But it’s still enjoyable.

I adored Balik. He made a marvelous male lead. I vacillated on Cassie. Sometimes I loved her and other times I kind of wanted to slap her, mostly during her internal waffling moments. We spend a lot of time in Cassie’s head, listening to her self-doubts. Most of which are unfounded. Together, however, they made a strong dynamic duo that I was more than happy to follow.

The plot itself is an interesting one. However, I had two personal complaints on that front. One, there were a lot of convenient solutions to problems presenting themselves. It would be hard to go into details without spoilers, but answers seemed to come to Cassie instead of the other way around. Two, I had a hard time believing the twist with her ‘father.’ It required an unexplained and otherwise impossible change in someone that just didn’t feel plausible to me. I get what the author was trying to do here in showcasing the power of love, etc. But it rang pretty false for me. Neither issue really detracted too much from my basic enjoyment of the book though.

It had a fairly slow start and there are a number of info-dumps, but it reads well, keeps you interested, and leaves you open to more. All in all, I’d be more than happy to recommend this book to young sci-fi lovers.