Tag Archives: paranormal

Bearly Awake

Book Review of Bearly Awake (Providence Paranormal College #1), by D.R. Perry

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I picked up a copy of Bearly Awake, by D. R. Perry, from Amazon. It was free at the time.

Description from Goodreads:
Bobby Tremain’s life used to seem charmed, but since his dad’s crippling accident, he has an avalanche of problems. He’s the first in his family to have a shot at college, also the first to head north of Louisiana. An early snow calls his Bear to hibernate a week before finals, but he needs to pass or he flunks out of Providence Paranormal College.

Lynn Frampton’s loneliness is almost more than she can take. She went to college on the other side of the country to get away from the persistent curse of unpopularity in a small town. Once at college, Lynn’s prickly personality has pushed everyone away yet again. At least, she’s at the top of her class.

Bobby needs Lynn’s help to stay awake and pass his exam, and she discovers she needs companionship more than she’d ever imagined. Lynn’s all set to transfer to a school back home, but Bobby thinks she’s his mate. Can he keep awake long enough to pass, and more importantly, convince his love to stay?

Review:
So, this wasn’t necessarily bad. It fit the bill of being fluffy and non-taxing, which is what I wanted when I picked it up. But I didn’t feel like it held together very well. The plot jumps around and a fairly large mystery isn’t solved. Worse though, was the main character, Lynn. She’s supposed to be smart and sassy and snarky and sarcastic. I know this because her internal monologue tells me, the reader, about it a dozen times. But I just found her unpleasant. Sure, there’s some fun nerdiness, that I and a large portion of the female populace recognize and appreciate. But it’s treated like she’s something special for it. And her constant, “I’m not like other girls because I’m smart,” is a blatant insult. It infers that other women aren’t smart. Duh. Basically, it felt like the author was trying way too hard to be funny and it just fell flat on its face.

Review of On the Edge & Bayou Moon (The Edge, # 1 & 2), by Ilona Andrews

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I borrowed audio versions of both On the Edge and Bayou Moon from Hoopla. They’re written by Ilona Andrews and read by Renée Raudman.

Description from Goodreads:
Rose Drayton lives on the Edge, between the world of the Broken (where people drive cars, shop at Wal-Mart, and magic is a fairy tale) and the Weird (where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny). Only Edgers like Rose can easily travel from one world to the next, but they never truly belong in either.

Rose thought if she practiced her magic, she could build a better life for herself. But things didn’t turn out how she planned, and now she works a minimum wage, off the books job in the Broken just to survive. Then Declan Camarine, a blueblood noble straight out of the deepest part of the Weird, comes into her life, determined to have her (and her power).

But when a terrible danger invades the Edge from the Weird, a flood of creatures hungry for magic, Declan and Rose must work together to destroy them, or the beasts will devour the Edge and everyone in it…

Review:
I went back and forwards with this book, sometimes really liking it and sometimes rolling my eyes. I absolutely liked Rose. She’s awesome, honestly. And I didn’t dislike Declan. I appreciated that, as Andrews so often does, he was a hero unafraid to let his heroine take risks and shine. There was none of the abuser discussed as an alpha romantic partner that I dislike in the PNR/UF genres. But I also never really came to love him either. He was too perfect and more of a caricature than a character. Also too perfect was the sappy, unnecessary ending.

I know it sounds like I didn’t like the book, but I really did. I just never loved it. As a series though, I can see myself wanting to read all of them. I feel the same way about the Kate Daniels books. Individually I always rate them middle of the road, but I want to read them all because I love the world.

I had the audio version and the narrator did an excellent job. I thought Declan sounded too old for the age he was supposed to be, but that was my only complaint. She really did an unusually good job.

Description from Goodreads:
Cerise Mar and her unruly clan are cash poor but land rich, claiming a large swathe of the Mire, the Edge swamplands between the state of Louisiana and the Weird. When her parents vanish, her clan’s long-time rivals are suspect number one.

But all is not as it seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feint and espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into the Edge—and Cerise’s life. William, a changeling soldier who left behind the politics of the Weird, has been forced back into service to track down a rival nation’s spymaster.

When William’s and Cerise’s missions lead them to cross paths, sparks fly—but they’ll have to work together if they want to succeed…and survive.

Review:
This was a solid 3 stars. I enjoyed it a lot, but wouldn’t go so far as to say I loved it. I thought William was absolutely adorable, Cerise was wonderfully badass and the Mar family was a great bunch of side characters. But I also thought it overly long, the ending a bit rushed (as in all wrapped up a little too easily) and I didn’t need the sappiness at the end.

I listened to this in audio and thought the narrator did an excellent job, much like in book one.

Review of You’ve Got Tail (Peculiar Mysteries #1), by Renee George

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I picked up a copy of You’ve Got Tail, by Renee George. I think I got it from an Instafreebie giveaway.

Description from Goodreads:
Sunny Haddock, an animal-loving vegetarian psychic, is stoked to leave California behind to start a new life in the Ozark town of Peculiar with her best friend Chavvah Trimmel. She ups the moving date when Chav goes missing, and Sunny high tails it to the small town. What Sunny doesn’t realize is that she’s moving into a community of were-shifters, and they don’t want a human resident. Especially one dumb enough to arrive a couple of days before the full moon—the only night of the month shifters have to take their pure animal forms.

When the gorgeous Babel Trimmel, Chav’s younger brother, (along with the sheriff, the mayor, and some other nice folk) suggests Sunny haul her U-haul and butt back out of town, she’s undeterred. Her psychic abilities might be out-of-whack, and blood makes her faint, but she’s not a quitter. Besides, she’s not about to go anywhere until she finds out what happened to Chavvah.

But Sunny has more to deal with than unfriendly townsfolk…like disturbing killer visions and the dog-like animal no one else sees that seems to be stalking her every move. To make matters worse, she is finding Babel to be more irresistible than crack on a donut.

Sunny needs to get her ability and her hormones under control if she wants to solve the mystery and save her best friend.

Review:
This review contains an oblique spoiler.

Corny but cute. All in all, I’ll call this a middle of the road read. I liked the characters but I I didn’t really feel the romance develop at all. Honestly, the writing was fine, but the plot left a lot to be desired.

The villain(s) are obvious very early on, one of them because it’s always this person in such books. I mean ALWAYS. Is there a crazy ex-girlfriend who is hostile for no apparent reason other than she’s not the heroine or in the heroine’s circle? Well, there you go. That’s you villain. ALWAYS. And as a woman that always makes me irritable. (I don’t need the constant ‘other women can’t be trusted’ lessons, thank you very much.) What’s more, very little of the book actually focused on the bad guys. So, I never really felt the tension. You literally never even meet some of them.

Anyhow, it was an ok fluff read. I didn’t dislike it but wasn’t floored by it either.

As a side note: Publisher, if you are going to draw your covers, could you please at least have your designers/artists read the description of the characters? I understand when using stock phots you can’t always find an appropriate match. But you drew Sunny and she’s clearly described in the book (several times) as having brown hair.