Tag Archives: Paranormal romance

Beyond the veil

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

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

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.

A Wicked Hunger

Book Review of Kiersten Fay’s A Wicked Hunger (Creatures of Darkness, #1)

A Wicked Hunger

Author, Kiersten Fay sent me an ecopy of her PNR novel A Wicked Hunger.

Description from Goodreads:
A hundred years after vampires revealed themselves to the masses, the world is still recovering from the hysteria and war that devastated much of the Earth. And though peace has been brokered between the human and vampire nations, it is tumultuous at best.

Orphaned at the age of ten, Coraline Conwell has struggled to survive a turbulent existence growing up alone on the harsh streets. Until a wealthy man provides an escape from her vagrant life by offering his hand in marriage. Out of place in the upper-crust world, Cora has done her best to adapt to her new role as wife, but when her husband is brutally murdered, she is ripped from her secure life at the hands of the Vampire Enforcement Agency.

Now her survival teeters on the whim of a brutally handsome vampire named Mason as she is hunted by those who would see her dead. She must keep unwanted desires for the sexy vampire from leading her down a dangerous path while she discovers there is more to this world, and herself, than she could have ever imagined.

Review:
I generally really enjoyed this book and I’ll get to the reasons why in a moment. But before I do, I have to rant a moment and say I was leaning toward giving this book four stars right up until I reached the end and it didn’t end. Seriously! WTF? I understand that as part of a series some threads have to be left open in order to link the books together, but nothing concluded in this book. NOTHING. In fact, a brand new character was introduced on essentially the last page. THE LAST PAGE! You just can’t do that and expect readers not to get irate. You just can’t. **Deep breath**

What I did like was the writing. It’s smooth and easy to read. I noticed one or two misused words and/or typos, but very few. I also thought that Mason was to die for. I adore seeing a tough guy go all weak at the knees over a female. Cora was an interesting mix of frightened and strong willed. I liked her well enough. I even found Knox to be a curious character and he appealed to me. However, unless he ties in and becomes integral to the plot in later books, the drama around him read very much like a pointless distraction that diluted the storyline. The time would have been far better spent staying on track with the original plot-line (which was essentially dropped, BTW) and actually wrapping something up, IMO.

So my final word on the matter is that A Wicked Hunger was an interesting read that left me incredibly unsatisfied at the end. It’s well written with some engaging characters, but I just really need a conclusion of some sort if I’m going to walk away happy.