Tag Archives: PNR

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Book Review: Dragon Assassin Academy, by T.M. Caruana

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I accepted a free copy of T.M. Caruana‘s Dragon Assassin Academy for review.
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I lost my father in the last attack against the dragon shifters. Now the Academy Council wants me to go undercover to live amongst murderers in the hope that if I can kill their King it will bring peace.

Then, I meet my teacher, Billy.

Harder to fool.

Harder to stay away from.

If he discovers my secret identity, I’m dead!

my review

I hate to say this, but this book was a hot mess from start to finish. In fact, if I hadn’t accepted it for review (and therefore felt obligated to finish it), I’d have DNFed it by the halfway mark. As it was, I skimmed the last half.

I found it clunky and disjointed, somehow repetitive AND inconsistent, cliched, predictable, and then cliffhanger to top it all off. Plus, it felt like a lower YA book until the on-page sex showed up—IMO, it needed to be one or have the other, but both didn’t work. To list all the examples of why this didn’t work for me would feel like I was attacking the book. So, let’s just leave it at this is a decent first pass for a manuscript. But it needed more work to be truly readable, let alone enjoyable.

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Other Reviews:

Book Review | Dragon Assassin Academy: Year 1 by T M Caruana

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Book Review: Something Darker, by S.A. Price

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I purchased a copy of S.A. Price‘s Something Darker from a local Indie bookstore called Spine.
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The one thing Syrus Alcot, the God of Death Osiris in the Egyptian Pantheon, wants in all the worlds is the woman he loved and lost returned to him. When he gave up his powers, and freedom for a life of service he was promised her return. That was over one thousand years ago. A member of a team of dark gods charged with keeping humanity safe, he leads a loveless existence in New York City, searching for the one thing that could bring his wife back to him, a lapis scarab that was lost to him ages before.

Gwen Stapleton, a mild mannered librarian, is unaware that she holds the key to not only Syrus’ happiness, but her own. Seemingly stuck in a hopeless relationship with a man she doesn’t love, she has no idea that a chance meeting in Alphabet City will start a landslide to her heart’s content. Because Gwen is the keeper of the scarab, and is everything Syrus has ever wanted… and hes not the only one.

An Ancient evil is waking, and its servants will stop at nothing to see it seize its rightful place as the new pantheon of earth. And in order for Syrus and his team to save the world, Gwen is going to have to accept him, and show that love does make all the difference.

my review
This was a total flop for me. I didn’t think to check the publication date before I bought it (it was published in 2012). Otherwise I would have passed on it. I know, from experience, that paranormal romances 10+ old or older are not a good match for me and Something Darker is a stellar example of why.

The norms, standards, and expectations of the romance genres have changed in the past decade. So, I am trying very hard to keep that in mind when writing this review. But there is just no way around how very much I did not enjoy this book, even if it’s style and content were the norm 10 years ago.

As I age, I am becoming less and less tolerant of women being treated as objects and walking sex dolls in my PNR. I cringe and sneer my way through scenes of faceless women panting to give head to men as they treat them like shit. Or sitting through scene after scene after scene of rape threats, or women being given to the henchmen to be gang raped. Or villains having rough sex with women they are actively disparaging, while she is shown to be getting off despite the abuse. Or the ‘heros’ (the ostensibly good guys) talking about all the pieces of ass, or flavor of the night, or treats, or presents, or other diminishing titles when talking about the nameless and unimportant women they are going to fuck and toss aside throughout the book, etc, etc, etc.

Generally, the heroine is the only woman shown to be worthy of respect. In fact, you can often tell that she’s the hero’s ‘One,’ because she’s the exception to the women are worthless objects (read garbage) rule and the only one seen or shown as truly human in the whole book.

And so, so, so, so, so much of Something Darker is all of the above. And I just slowly lost my will to continue. In fact, I skimmed the last several chapters just to get it finished.

Add to all of that, that the book really needed another round of edits and everything and everyone was underdeveloped and I was just ready to toss the book on the DNF pile. I finished it, but just barely and not happily. I will not be continuing the series.

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http://delightedreader.com/review-something-darker-by-s-a-price/

 

 

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Book Review: Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase

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Last week, I suddenly remembered that you can buy signed copies of books from authors on Etsy. So, I purchased several. Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase was one of them.

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Talk about rags to riches. Cinderella had nothing on me.

I have a sparkly new crown, a remodeled ancient castle, and I’m mated to six of the most delectable princes a girl could conjure.

But my happily-ever-after honeymoon still seems a long way off.

There are plenty of magical creatures in Haret and Earth who would kill to see me dethroned – literally – and we can’t let our guard down yet.

Still, my men promised me a break and a bucket list, and my mates always deliver their goods. We’ll just have to get our sugar in small bites.

I’m Carlyle Licorne, and I’m ready for my next sugar fix.

The Sugar Bites series features Carlyle and her six men, navigating the new Haret as only she can do – with snark, sugar, and shanking.

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

my review

I am just infuriated. I can’t even tell you if this was a good book or not because I’m so distracted by, yet again, picking up a book labeled book one and finding out that THAT IS A LIE. I have complained about this before. Hell, I wrote a blog post way back in 2016 complaining about this very thing.

I started this book and very quickly sensed that I’d been dropped into a story. Characters appeared without introductions. There was no world-building or even descriptions, places were named but nothing else. And the plot was 100% based on events that apparently happened in the past, outside of this book (one presumes the previous series).

So, a quick Goodread search provided me two pieces of information. I was reminded that the blurb says,

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

And that the The Haret Chronicles is a 7 book series. And since I’m deeming the above statement untrue, that makes Mint Freeze book number 8, no matter what the cover and blurb say. Because even at page 107/130 (82% into the book) I came across quotes like this,

What we’re doing—what you’re doing—it means everything, Carlyle.

My heart gave a lurch. I knew it. God, did I know it. I lost sleep over the pressure of what I was supposed to be able to do, and the fear that I wouldn’t be enough.

But, if you’ve not read the previous books (like I haven’t, trusting that ‘book one’ on the cover) you have no idea what they were doing or what she was supposed to able to do.

The book is entirely like this. I could have chosen a hundred other quotes. I chose that one because it’s so late in the book and illustrates the point that the reader is never given the information missing from the previous series and it’s pertinent to understanding this book. YOU CANNOT READ THIS AS A COMPLETE WORK.

You, in fact, can’t read these books before The Haret Chronicles, as the blurb claims, and feel as if you’ve been given any sort of satisfying story. Period. I literally just spent 130 pages with characters I didn’t care about—since the reader is apparently expected to already know and care about the characters, that opportunity isn’t given here—chasing a plot I knew nothing about, in order to…yeah, I got nothing. I don’t even know what the end goal was. Plus, it’s a cliffie on top of everything else. I mean, I read the book. But I feel nothing but frustration having done so. And I can’t imagine that was the author’s intention.

What’s more, over half of this novella appears to just be pulled directly from past books and fed to the reader as memories. So, I don’t even think this is a new story. Having not read The Haret Chronicles, I can’t know if it’s literally a cut and paste (from previous books) job or if it’s freshly written. But it felt like a cut and paste job.

So, if you’ve read The Haret Chronicles, this is probably a fun little addendum and you’re experience with Mint Freeze was probably completely different than mine. I can see what role the ‘sugar bites’ are supposed to play, after all. If you haven’t read The Haret Chronicles, don’t believe the lie that you can read this first. Put this book down and go start at the beginning.

The writing seems fine. The three characters included here (Carlyle and two of six of her mates) seem likeable enough. The sex scenes were fine. I might have liked the series if I hadn’t unknowingly started it at book 8.

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