Tag Archives: #indiefever

Finding Release

Book Review of Finding Release (Wild R Farm, #1), by Silvia Violet

Leave a reply

Finding ReleaseI bought a copy of Silvia Violet‘s Finding Release.

Description from Goodreads:
Coleman Wilder is a half-breed werewolf. Some days the tension between his human side and his werewolf instincts threaten to tear him apart. But the challenge of running a horse farm as a gay man in a conservative Tennessee town keeps him focused until he meets horse shifter, Jonah Marks.

Jonah’s family insists that shifting is sinful, but Jonah longs to let his stallion run free. Desperate to escape his family’s judgment, he asks Cole, his secret crush, for a job. Cole turns him down, scared his desire for Jonah will make him lose control. When Jonah’s brother threatens his life, Cole struggles to save him and give them both a second chance at the life they’ve always wanted.

Review:
I love me some m/m shifters. I do. I was even intrigued by the idea of a horse shifter (though I did wonder were all that extra mass would come from). But the truth is that this book just didn’t live up to its potential.

Scroll up. Read the book’s description. Add in some serious insta-lust/love and a lot of inappropriately timed and out of nowhere sex, then read the description 50 more times. There, you’ve just read the book. It’s so repetitive that I can’t think of anything not in the description that was added in the ~200 of the story. It was just the same arguments, internal thoughts and mushy, lovey-dovey drivel over and over and over again. It was also incredibly predictable and all the challenges were overcome easily.

The writing itself was fine, but there was no world-building, no character development, no shades of grey to those characters, no growth of a relationship, no depth to the plot, no twists, no turns, no unexpected events, no finesse in the story, and no doubt from page 1 that everyone would have their awkwardly arranged, anything but naturally occurring happy ending. No, this one was not a winner for me.

Murder Most Witchy

Book Review of Murder Most Witchy (Wendy Lightower Mystery #1), by Emily Rylands

Leave a reply

Murder Most WitchyI downloaded a copy of Murder Most Witchy, by Emily Rylands from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
The Lightower family has been hunting down paranormal phenomena in the small town of North Harbor for generations. Unlike the rest of her family, Wendy Lightower has never dreamed of chasing evil witches or unearthing magical secrets. Her greatest ambition in life is to be a full-time librarian and leave her witchy roots far behind her. But when a murder is committed in her very own library, Wendy cannot ignore that there is no natural explanation for the killing. If the killer is to be caught, she must call on family and friends alike to solve the magical murder. 

When she chose books over boogeymen and libraries over lycans, Wendy thought she would finally be able to live a ‘normal’ life. Now, her library is no longer the sanctuary she imagined it to be, and there may just be a killer hiding in the stacks.

Review:
This was cute but a little on the slow side. While I never quite achieved boredom, it never grabbed me either. The murderer was obvious from the beginning, though thankfully not as obvious as the red herrings might have been. Unfortunately, even they were so obvious as to be too obvious and therefore easily dismissible.

The characters were fun but not deeply developed and a little on the cliché side. The outline of a love-triangle felt unsupported and annoying (especially since I couldn’t figure out why she even considered one of the men). There was no significant world-building. So, while it was entertaining it all felt very much like fluff.

The writing itself was straightforward, though the occasional abrupt shift in POV was jarring. There did seem to be a need for some further editing. I caught a lot of small mistakes, little things like the ‘witch trails’ instead of witch trials. Perfectly readable, but also distracting.

All in all, not a bad book but not great either. Kind of a witchy, cozy mystery. I’d read the second if I found it free, but I’m not rushing out to buy it.

Memento Mori

Book Review of Memento Mori, by Katy O’Dowd

2 Replies

Memento MoriAuthor, Katy O’Dowd sent me a copy of her novel Memento Mori.

Description from Goodreads:
Take tea with the Victorian Mafia – organized crime has never been so civilized 

Revenge is a dish best served cold. At the Lamb residence, it is also served on fine bone china. 

The untimely demise of Thaddeus Lamb leaves his son Riley in charge of the vast Lamb empire, which imports tea, picks pockets, extorts, and keeps men warm on cold winter’s nights. And so the Lambs grieve for their father in the best way they know how… Retribution. 

Hired by the new head of the Fox Family, a position recently vacated by another untimely demise, the assassin O’Murtagh is tasked with the utter destruction of all the Lamb Family’s business associates. They learn the hard way that there is no better hit man than a beautiful woman with tricks and weapons up her finely coiffed sleeves. 

Treachery and deceit abound in the streets of London, and no one is safe. Honestly, it’s enough to make anyone drink. Would you care for one lump or two?

Review:
Memento Mori is an ambitious novel. Taken on by a less talented writer, I think it could easily have been a flop. So many intricately woven plot points going back and forwards in time and revealing small clues before tying them all together in the last few pages surely too immense skill to keep straight, let alone produce readability. But O’Dowd manages it.

While I had a hard time warming up to Sunday (she’s not exactly the warm and fuzzy type), she is a marvellous assassin. (I joked at one point that she is the assassin Celaena Sardothien, from Throne of Glass, wanted to be.) So often female assassins in literature are shown to be emotionally crippled by their work in ways male assassins never are. Even authors who set out to write kick-ass killer heroines seem to feel obliged to maintain some semblance of the feeble female who can’t quite separate herself like a man. I often find myself irritated.

Sunday’s professionalism trumps her emotions time and time again and I appreciated this about her. And O’Dawd also never excuses Sunday’s unladylike profession by ensuring all her victims are monochromatically bad. I came close to tears over a mark at one point and actually cried at another. Oh, how I love an author who lets likeable characters go.

Similarly, I have never come across more likeable villains than the Lamb brothers and their dandified muscle, Michaels and Davids. They’re seriously bad men, who you just can’t help but like.

Despite all of the unexpected ways these characters’ lives intersected and the amazing writing it took to bring it all together, I did think the book drug for a while. Everything is told in a sort of staid, mellow tone that flows nicely but never really grips a reader. You meander toward the end instead of race to it.

It ended well though. By which I mean there is an actual ending. It’s definitely open for more, but it’s not a precipitous cliffhanger. Having finished the book, I feel I’ve satisfactorily finished this part of the story too. Definitely worth picking up if you like Victorian mob stories with light steampunk elements.