Tag Archives: Paranormal romance

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.

Beyond the veil

Book Review of Beyond The Veil (The Veil Series, #1), by Pippa Dacosta

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Beyond the VeilAuthor, Pippa Dacosta sent me a paperback copy of her newest novel, Beyond the Veil.

Description from Goodreads:
“They say I’m half demon, but I like to think of myself as half human, especially as the demons want me dead.” 

Charlie Henderson is living a lie. Her real name is Muse and her attempt at a normal life is about to go up in smoke. 

When a half-demon assassin walks into her life, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, Muse must return to the one man she hoped never to see again and ask for help. The Prince of Greed isn’t known for his charity. The price is high, but the cost could tear her apart. 

Trapped between the malevolent intentions of a Prince of Hell, an assassin with ulterior motives, and all of demon-kind, Muse must embrace the lure of chaos at her core; the demon inside her, in order to survive.

When your ex is the Prince of Greed, you’d better be ready to raise hell.

Review:
If I was inclined to use stars on this blog, I would call this a solid 3, maybe a 3.5. It was a pleasant distraction. I enjoyed reading it, but it left me wanting in a lot of aspects.

First, there is very little character development. The book jumps right into the action. While this is fun, it didn’t give me any time to get to know Muse or anyone else. Plus, a lot of Muse’s history is referenced as the book progresses. I mean, like, a whole book’s worth is hinted at—major drama. This left me feeling like I couldn’t possibly be reading the first book in the series or that this is actually the first in a spin-off series. It isn’t, as far as I know, but it sure felt like it. So much is skimmed over, or the reader is just told it happened. I was duly informed that Muse had a tragic past, but that wasn’t enough to make me feel for her or that history. 

This was all complicated by her tendency to have whiplash changes of opinion with no evidence of an impetus for change. As an example, she spent much of the beginning of the book telling herself she can’t/won’t go back to Akil, that he’s dangerous and she has to keep her distance because he can get under skin easily. She’s very adamant about this. Then he shows up and says, ‘Come to a party with me,’ and she not only goes, she tells herself she deserves to have fun and relax. It was a very abrupt change of attitude toward him and nothing seemed to have happened to give her a reason to suddenly be less wary around him.

The same tendency toward thinness could be claimed for world-building. There isn’t much. We’re told demons exist and live on the other side of a ‘veil,’ that’s about it. I’m assuming the universe is otherwise the same as ours, but I don’t know. Nor do I know the time frame. It could be years in the future or today. I’m not sure. 

I also thought the sex was out of place. It wasn’t at all graphic. It just popped up regularly at inopportune moments. It left me feeling like Muse had no control over herself. It didn’t matter whom she was with, she was lusting after him. As she’s a woman with a history of slavery, including sexual slavery, I developed the surely erroneous impression that her body responded to any powerful man available with no regard for her own wishes. I’m afraid she felt a little like a whore in this respect (and I’ve purposefully used the more inflammatory word here) as if she was so accustomed to servicing men that she did it without conscious effort or even apparent knowledge that she was following an established pattern. I’m fairly sure this wasn’t the author’s intent, but it’s still the impression I garnered. 

Lastly, it had a bit of a deus ex machina ending (pet peeve, grrr), and a lot of important information was skipped over between the final chapter and the epilogue. I needed more details to believe it…actually, that’s true of the whole book, but especially the ending. 

All-in-all, the author has a really interesting idea here. A lot could be made out of Muse’s slavery, subsequent strengths, and appreciation of the mundane. But I think the book felt rushed. Too much was only sketched out or simply leaped over. I was never able to get enough of a feel for the characters to understand their motives and actions, leaving everything feeling random and unpredictable. 

It is well written and, other than a few missing words, well edited. Plus (and I know this is a strange thing to mention), I like the size of the book. At 8×5 inches, it’s bigger than a mass-market paperback but not as big as the ~9×6 I’ve come to associate with self-published books. While it wasn’t a faultless read, it’s worth picking up. As I said, I had complaints, but I also enjoyed the ride. 

The Shifter’s Conspiracy

Book Review The Shifter’s Conspiracy, by Cassie Laurent

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The Shifter's ConspiracyI grabbed Cassie Laurent‘s The Shifter’s Conspiracy from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Tess is a curvy, young detective that just can’t seem to catch a break. When the Commissioner of the police department brings in the FBI after a series of unsolved kidnappings, she meets Elias, a handsome, successful FBI agent who’s an expert in these types of crimes.

Elias has a wild conspiracy theory: he thinks shifters are behind the recent wave of kidnappings–they’re taking women as their mates in a scheme that reaches all the way into the upper echelons of New York City’s infamous Mafia. Elias knows this… because he’s a shifter, too. His attraction to Tess is undeniable, but he’s afraid she’ll reject him if she finds out who he really is. Will he be able to solve the case without driving away the woman he’s convinced is his true mate?

Review:
Um…No. Just no. I had to force myself to finish this one. It had stilted dialogue that used names too often to be natural, only passable editing, no character development, and a very simplistic story that was told in an abrupt manner. If it was erotica I might let it off the hook, but it’s not. It’s a very mild paranormal romance.

Seriously, Tess is supposed to have impressed the FBI agents by thinking to check the victims’ social media sites, as if they wouldn’t do that anyway, as if they probably don’t have some honker computer program to do it automatically. This is all after the fact that the FBI was called in for an abduction case involving 28 women, but the police didn’t seem to have done anything beforehand. Nothing. Tess and Elias solved it in a day! You have got to be kidding me. She walked into a bar and before she could even finish one drink, she was approached and kidnapped by the criminal. That’s seriously all it’s supposed to have taken.

Additionally, Tess is just an exceptionally weak heroine. Despite being a New York detective, not even a uniformed officer but a detective (which implies time on the force), she cried because someone called her “chubs.” Oh, poor baby. This, by the way, is the only aspect of the whole book that makes it BBW, as it is titled on Amazon. Her body is never even described to the reader. She also didn’t seem to know anything about investigating. Elias might as well of just taken the secretary out with him. I realise she’s supposed to have been a rookie detective, but did she not have any training? Did she never work with a detective during her time in uniform? She was like a child enamoured with the hero.

The inclusion of the paranormal was similarly obtuse. There was no reference to anything preternatural until 42%, and then shifters were SUDDENLY thrown into the mix. I knew they would show up at some point because of title (The Shifter’s Conspiracy (Paranormal BBW Werewolf Romance Novella)), but there was no build up or hints or anything else. To say it lacked any sort of subtly would be an understatement.

This was actually true for the book as a whole. There was a lot of being told how strong or strange feelings were, but no showing of it and no time to do so (since the whole thing occurs in about 36 hours). The reader is very bluntly told everything they are supposed to feel, but aren’t led to a single thought.

The whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that the book is just over 100 pages, but a full 25% of that is wasted in the beginning by showing Tess essentially doing menial tasks and getting ready for an interview. It’s meaningless to the rest of the story. That only leaves 75-80 pages in which to introduce characters, build a romance, solve an FBI level mystery, reveal werewolves, mate and conclude. Do you think you could manage it? I doubt I could and I’m certain Laurent didn’t.

This book has an interesting premise, but its execution is lacking. I wish Laurent all the best, but I won’t be continuing the series.