Tag Archives: PNR

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Book Review: Hadley House, by Olivia Lewin

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I picked up an e-copy of Olivia Lewin‘s Hadley House as an Amazon freebie.

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Life had gone to hell in a handbasket when I received news that my Uncle Felix had passed away and left me an inheritance. Fired from my dream job and days away from eviction, I took the inheritance as the blessing it was.

Unfortunately, it was only a blessing until I saw the house I now had in my name.

A falling apart hovel in the middle of a decommissioned graveyard. Bad enough, right?

It got worse.

The place is overrun by creatures that shouldn’t exist. An oversized orc. A pixie-demon with an attitude. A feral wolfman. A defective basilisk. And a ghost. Have I mentioned I’m terrified of ghosts?

I need to get the hell out of here, but it’s easier said than done when the house is keeping us all captive and the only way out is untangling a series of puzzles my uncle left for me. And the kicker; the worst part of it all?

I’m stuck in an infinite time loop that always ends in me dying and resetting the day to the beginning. I have no idea who’s killing me or why time is rewinding, but I have a bad feeling it’s an important part of the puzzle. I have an even badder feeling that the men have a lot to do with the happenings in Hadley House. The men who don’t remember who I am at the beginning of each cycle, the ones I know intimately, who don’t act like the monsters society makes them out to be.

I doubt I can make it out with both my heart and my body intact, but I’ve got to try.

my review

This was entertaining enough; a little repetitive and padded in the plot, but I enjoyed it. I would have jumped into book two if it had been out yet. Having said that, I did feel like we (the readers) were denied the chance actually to get to know the men as characters. They remained pretty underdeveloped. And Hadley’s willingness and ability to forgive them was almost supernatural in and of itself.

I feel like I need to address the sex. I actually really loved that the men had been locked in with one another for a long time and were, therefore, just as comfortable having sex with one another as Hadley. But the orgey-level sex scenes played an odd role in the book. They were not particularly well-stitched into the plot. (They actually stood out as anomalies to the rest of the plot.) But this also isn’t erotica or porn without plot. This means it is a non-romance/non-erotic plot, shallow as it may be, and then the occasional full-on, multiple-partner sex scenes that felt strangely out of place.

All in all, I’d have read another book to find out what happens after the cliffhanger, and I enjoyed this well enough. But I didn’t love it.

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https://avanorris.com/hadley-house-by-olivia-lewin/

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Book Review: The Monsters & Miseries series, by A.K. Koonce

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I picked up a freebie copy of A.K. Koonce‘s the Monsters & Miseries series omnibus (Hellish Fae, Sinless Demons, and Spiteful Creatures) from Amazon.

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There’s a dark secret inside of me. A monster clawing to get out.

I was thrown out of the fae world because of it. But I’m back now. Three brooding demons and a sinful incubus returned me to my sweet little homeland. And I’ll finish what I started all those years ago.

Sure, maybe my delicate fae features are twisting into spiraling horns and demonic eyes, but that won’t stop me from righting my wrongs.

The Queen of Hell might possess my body but the deadly vengeance in my blood is my own. The Prince will die by my hand for what he’s done.

All I have to do is make sure the creature at the back of my mind doesn’t kill me first.

my review

This was a bit of a whimpering fizzle for me; so much potential utterly wasted. The series started out well enough but then seemed to start spinning its wheels and repeating itself. It felt very unfocused.  Whole elements of the plot disappeared and then reappeared with no explanation (I’m thinking Catherine); the characters were caricatures rather than characters; the editing needs another pass; the ending was a cop-out, and all the “fuckings” drove me nuts.

Let me address this last one first, before anyone mistakes me for a pearl-clutcher. I curse like a sailor. I have no problem with foul language in books. But the use of fucking in this book is overwhelming. It barrelled right the fuck into redundant territory and kept fucking going. I got monsters and miseries photoso tired of reading it. It just became a stutter in the narrative. But worse, every fucking character used it in exactly the same fucking way, which meant it did nothing to differentiate characters. They all sounded exactly the fucking same.

Lastly, and most importantly, there isn’t enough story here to carry 500+ pages and nowhere near enough sex to be called porn-without-plot. So, I was bored. Others’ experiences may vary.

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Book Review: Cruel Shifterverse (1-3), by Jasmine Mas

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I picked up a copy of Jasmine Mas‘ Cruel Shifterverse series (Psycho Shifters) as an Amazon freebie. I purchased Psycho Fae and Psycho Beasts.

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Fight like a girl…or a shifter of lore.

After growing up with nothing, I’ve finally found my path to freedom: I’m a shifter, an elite soldier who transforms into a monster.

All I have to do is survive.

I didn’t count on my three 6’5 roommates. Covered in tattoos, jeweled, and horned, these are like no men I’ve ever dealt with before.

They don’t think I belong.
They don’t think I’m strong enough for war.
They don’t think I can fight.

I’m about to prove them wrong.

The only problem, can I survive them discovering the secrets of my past? In the battle for life and death, everyone is so much more than they seem.

Jax, Ascher, and Cobra are going to be devastated when they discover my truth…just wait until they see my shifted form.

my review

I read Psycho Shifters, Psycho Fae, and Psycho Beasts back to back, so I’ll just review them as one. All in all, I thought this series began well, but it went downhill quickly. The whole thing started out bonkers and over the top, and I enjoyed it. But then the author just built on that theme, making it more bonkers and more ridiculous. Eventually, the jokes no longer felt like jokes. It was all just too slapstick to enjoy. It felt very much like Mas just needed an editor or BFF or someone to pull her back from the edge and suggest a little moderation. Plus, the plot of book three is basically a book two redux. I’d never go so far as to say I disliked it. But the series definitely lost any cache it might have started with.

But worst of all was just how strongly the author leaned into the ‘every woman except the heroine and her friends are worthless, slutty, and untrustworthy.’ The older I get, the less tolerant I am of this dynamic. And Mas went hard for it here. There are several passages in which we are explicitly told women are nothing but meaningless sluts with no worth. *Several* And those are just the times we’re told outright. We’re also shown over and over and over and over again, as every other female to grace the pages is either trying to get one of the men to sleep with her, betraying the heroine, or just evil in some other fashion. As a female reader, I just don’t enjoy filling my entertainment with paragraph after paragraph of how worthless my sex (and by extension) I am.

If I’m honest, it feels like a mark of immaturity.  Like the pick-me girls in high school who haven’t yet grown up and done the internal work of weeding out their own internalized misogyny. Could female authors maybe grow past doing the patriarchy’s job of them? This in NO WAY endears me to the heroine (or the author).

If I came across the rest of the series for free, I might read it to see what happens to Aron. But I’m not going out of my way for it.

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