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Book Review of The Flower Bowl Spell, by Olivia Boler

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The Flower Bowl SpellI grabbed a copy of Olivia Boler‘s The Flower Bowl Spell from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
Journalist Memphis Zhang isn’t ashamed of her Wiccan upbringing—in fact, she’s proud to be one of a few Chinese American witches in San Francisco, and maybe the world. Unlike the well-meaning but basically powerless Wiccans in her disbanded coven, Memphis can see fairies, read auras, and cast spells that actually work—even though she concocts them with ingredients like Nutella and antiperspirant. Yet after a friend she tries to protect is brutally killed, Memphis, full of guilt, abandons magick to lead a “normal” life. The appearance, however, of her dead friend’s sexy rock star brother—as well as a fairy in a subway tunnel—suggest that magick is not done with her. Reluctantly, Memphis finds herself dragged back into the world of urban magick, trying to stop a power-hungry witch from using the dangerous Flower Bowl Spell and killing the people Memphis loves—and maybe even Memphis herself.

Review:
A fun quick read, of the light and fluffy variety.

I had a hard time getting into The Flower Bowl Spell. Things seemed to drag a bit in the beginning. There was a lot of time dedicated to things like dinner or describing things, but once the mystery presented itself the pace really picked up. What’s more, Memphis’ voice, the one she’d been establishing in her semi-rants and sarcastic descriptions of things easily morphed into a slightly panicked, fairly harried one that fit the plot wonderfully. She is a delightful character.

I enjoyed that the mystery kept me guessing up until the end. However, I do think the resolution came about a little too easily and the book ended with questions still unanswered. It wasn’t a cliffhanger or anything, there were just some things that Memphis and therefore the reader never learned the answer to.

All in all, I had a lot of fun with this one. The writing was sharp, the humour witty and the editing good. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more of Ms. Boler’s works.

Book Review of A Charming Crime (Magical Cure Mystery, #1) , by Tonya Kappes

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A Charming CrimeI snatched Tonya Kappes‘ A Charming Crime from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting it was still free, maybe even perma-free.

Description from Goodreads:
June Heal has nothing to lose when she relocates her homeopathic cure shop, A Dose of Darla, from the flea market booth in her home town, to a quaint shop in the cozy but unusual little town of Whispering Falls, Kentucky. Or so it seems.

Cures and trouble…

Whispering Falls has a lot of secrets. From talking snow globes to whispering animals not to mention a few sprinkles of fairy dust, June realizes Whispering Falls is more magical than she thought. . .literally.

Magic stirs…

June discovers she was born into a family of psychics, and her homeopathic cures truly are magical. Unfortunately, they are not magical enough to save her from being the number one murder suspect when a member of the community that she had just had a disagreement with shows up face down in the lake with June’s lucky charm in the victim’s grasp.

And troubles double…

Add to that an attraction to her high school best friend, Sheriff Oscar Park and Mr. Prince Charming, her cat, is stealing charms from Belle’s Baubles, June is forced to clear her name in more ways than murder. After all, they don’t have cauldrons in jail.

Review:
This was an all right read. I found it amusing and there were aspects of it I enjoyed—Oscar, for example (though I would have liked him to have had a role comparable to the importance June suggested he had in her life). Plus, the idea of the self-contained village of magical specialists was an interesting one. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed some aspects of the book I found myself gnashing my teeth at others.

There were just tons of little things that annoyed me. A mysterious village, 20 minutes away that NO ONE knows about, but isn’t hidden by magic. Why do these people own cars? They apparently don’t actually drive them. The never-ending ding dong supply. The fact that in investigating the murder June repeatedly compromised evidence and didn’t seem to care. The fact that conversations were often clipped and so abbreviated that I wondered why anyone bothered with the visit. The miraculous intuition that provided an endless supply of convenient solutions to plot problems. The onamonapias. The fact that the villagers manipulated June into moving there and then seemed to resent her presence. Why did they bring her then? The fact that the villagers seemed to hide information from her for no apparent reason. The lack of character development. I don’t even know how old June and Oscar are or what they look like. The way fairies were suddenly thrown in toward the end with no previous indication that non-humans lived in this world. The predictable villain who conveniently spills his guts at the least provocation, etc. {Yes, I know those aren’t complete sentences, but you get the point.}

Worst of all though, is that one of my all time biggest literary pet peeve is when characters come into a situation with some glaring social injustice that has withstood the test of time and then says, ‘hey you need to change this’ and everyone cheers and instantly does. Seriously, if it was that simple surely someone living in the village would have done it before now. It’s painfully polly anna and a cheap plot device to make sure a happy ending comes to pass. I really, REALLY hate it when books do this. It’s incredibly arrogant. I mention it because June does just this at the end of the book and I literally groaned.

So, my final call is that while amusing fluff and worth spending a couple hours reading, it could have been better.

Book Review of Touched and Death Rejoices, by A. J. Aalto

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I grabbed A. J. Aalto‘s novel, Touched (The Marnie Baranuik Files, #1) from the Amazon free list. I then borrowed a copy of book two, Death Rejoices and snatched a copy of the short story Cold Company, which is perma-free.

TouchedDescription from Goodreads:
The media has a nickname for Marnie Baranuik, though she’d rather they didn’t; they call her the Great White Shark, a rare dual-talented forensic psychic. Twice-Touched by the Blue Sense–which gives her the ability to feel the emotions of others, and read impressions left behind on objects–Marnie also has a doctorate in preternatural biology and a working knowledge of the dark arts. She is considered without peer in the psychic community. 

Then her first big FBI case ended with a bullet in one shoulder and a chip on the other, a queasy heart and a serial killer in the wind, leaving her a public flop and a private wreck. When the FBI’s preternatural crimes unit tracks her down at a remote mountain lodge for her insight on a local case, her quiet retirement is promptly besieged by a stab-happy starlet, a rampaging ghoul, and a vampire-hunting jackass in tight Wranglers. Marnie figures the only real mystery is which one will kill her first. 

Too mean to die young, backed up by friends in cold places, and running with a mouth as demure as a cannon’s blast, Marnie Baranuik is about to discover that there’s no such thing as quitting time when you’re Touched.

Review:
I really quite enjoyed this one. Yes, it got completely ridiculous after a while. Yes, Marnie’s use of juvenile word’s like “ginormous” or “poopyhead’ almost drove me to distraction, as did Harry’s nonsensical old-English-speak. Yes, some bits of it were a tad predictable. Yes, I finished up with questions remaining. But yes, I roared with laughter and just basically had a good time with the story and the characters. What more can I really ask for? I know this is a painfully short review, but I’m off to start book two.

Death RejoicesDescription from Goodreads:
Marnie Baranuik is back, and this time, the Great White Shark of psychic investigations has “people skills” and a new assistant who seems to harbor an unhealthy curiosity about Harry, her revenant companion. Together, they’ve got a whole lot of questions that need answering. Is an ancient vampire hunting in Denver? Who is stalking Lord Dreppenstedt? How do you cure a slipper-humping bat, ditch an ogre, or give a demon king the slip? And what the hell was she thinking, swearing off cookies?

Teaming up with her sexual nemesis, Special Agent Mark Batten, and their long-suffering supervisor, Gary Chapel, Marnie discovers that vampire hunters aren’t easy to rescue, secrets don’t stay buried, and zombies sure are a pain in the ass to kill.

Review:
Marnie and her menagerie continued to crack me up in this book. I’ll admit that I found her antics a little over the top here though. Where in book one she was mildly self-depreciating and would concede to mistakes or causing chaos, here she seemed to brag about and revel in it. As a result she eventually started to convince me, the reader, that she really must be as much of a ditzy ‘silly little poppet’ as she claimed to be. I’m not really into stupid heroines. Plus, Diet Dr. Pepper! Really?

Additionally, I wasn’t able to successfully get my head around her ability to simultaneously commit herself to Harry, but also still lust over Mark. I needed some closure, either in the form of choosing one over the other or a ménage à trois. The situation was untenable and by the end its continuation started to forced and unnatural.

Despite a few grumbles on my part (Harry’s ridiculously antiquated English-ese, for example) I just plain enjoyed myself with the book. It’s fluffy and fun. Sometimes that’s all I’m looking for.