Tag Archives: Pocket Books

Book Review of Ink and Bone, by Lisa Unger

I borrowed a copy of Lisa Unger‘s Ink and Bone through my local library. It’s narrated by Molly Pope.

Description from Goodreads:

For as long as she can remember, twenty-year-old Finley Montgomery has been able to see into the future. She dreams about events before they occur and sees beyond the physical world, unconsciously using her power to make supernatural things happen.

But Finley can’t control these powers—and there’s only one person who can help. So Finley moves to The Hollows, a small town in upstate New York where her grandmother lives, a renowned seer who can finally teach Finley how to use her gift.

A gift that is proving to be both a blessing and a curse, as Finley lands in the middle of a dangerous investigation involving a young girl who has been missing for ten months and the police have all but given up hope.

With time running out there’s only so much Finley can do as The Hollows begins to reveal its true colors. As she digs deeper into the town and its endless layers, nothing is what it seems. But one thing is clear: The Hollows gets what it wants, no matter what.

Review:

I quite enjoyed this and I think Molly Pope read it well. I liked that everyone was a little messed up and, while that might not have directly contributed to the tragedy, everyone was forced to confront it. I thought there were several things that felt very real. I liked the characters and I liked the pacing.

I did think the twist at the end was a little forced. I worked, but I found it difficult. I was invested in someone else. (And I can’t explain further without a major spoiler)

For the record, this is book five in a series. But I hadn’t read any of the previous books and didn’t feel the lack at all. It stands fully alone.

Book Review of A Lowcountry Christmas, by Mary Alice Monroe

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A couple weeks ago, I did a Christmas Challenge. I read the four paperbacks that had been languishing on my shelves because they were all Christmas novels. I figured what better time to get them read? I finished it and, low and behold, another one landed on my doorstep. I won Mary Alice Monroe‘s A Lowcountry Christmas through Goodreads. Again, I figured there was no better time to get it read that Christmas Eve.

Description:
As far as ten-year-old Miller McClellan is concerned, it’s the worst Christmas ever. His father’s shrimp boat is docked, his mother is working two jobs, and with finances strained, Miller is told they can’t afford the dog he desperately wants. “Your brother’s return from war is our family’s gift,” his parents tell him. But when Taylor returns with PTSD, the stress and strain darken the family.

Then Taylor’s service dog arrives—a large black Labrador/Great Dane named Thor. His brother even got the dog! When Miller goes out on Christmas Eve with his father’s axe, determined to get his family the tree they can’t afford, he takes the dog for company—but accidentally winds up lost in the wild forest. In the midst of this emergency, the splintered family must come together and rediscover their strengths, family bond, and the true meaning of Christmas.

Review:
For those who enjoy this sort of book, I imagine this will be a winner. Personally, I gave it a shot, but I call this sort of book Misery Porn. Yes, there is a happy ending and you get a taste of it in the prologue to know it’s coming. But the whole rest of the book is people being miserable.

I can sense Monroe had a good intent. She obviously wanted to inform readers about PTSD and the healing powers of service dogs. But the book often felt didactic and I felt the ‘healing’ happened too abruptly.

Further, I had a hard time buying into the whole, “The splintered family must come together to rediscover their strengths, their family bond, and the true meaning of Christmas.” when the father is so obviously left out of the equation. He’s the only family member without a POV and until you’re supposed to go “awww” and believe everything suddenly happy he’s the antagonist of the book.

The writing however is perfectly readable and the book seems well-edited. I honestly think this is just a matter of wrong book for the reader. But it’s Christmas Eve and I wanted to read a Christmas book.

Book Review of Dark Protector (Paladins of Darkness #1), by Alexis Morgan

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Last year, I found several autographed Alexis Morgan books at a second-hand store. They were signed “To Mom and Dad.” I was totally taken with the mystery of how these books came to be at a charity shop, so I bought them and made them my own.

This is not one of those books. It turns out that they were the second, third and fifth in the Paladins of Darkness series. (I bet there had been a copy of this one too, but either someone had already bought it or it was just lost in the thousands of books available.) I bought this one, Dark Protector off Amazon so that I could read the three signed ones I’d already bought.

Generally, regardless of what I might or might not think of the books, I love the mystery around them.

Description from Goodreads:
Devlin Bane: Born a Paladin, he is a member of an ancient band of warriors locked in a centuries-old war against evil.

His destiny: To die over and over again to protect mankind from the Others, only to be revived each time by his mortal Handler.

But his fierce strength and courage cannot save him from gradually becoming one of the monsters he was born to destroy.

Dr. Laurel Young, who has spent years training to become a Handler, must remain detached from her patients. But each time she revives the darkly compelling Devlin Bane, he claims a little more of her soul and incites in her desires that grow wilder and wilder — even as he inches closer to losing his humanity.

As the war against the Others grows more desperate, Laurel and Devlin can’t help but give in to the fierce hunger that’s sizzled between them for so long. Now they’ll face the ultimate battle together — to save a dark, passionate love that goes against every rule as they join forces to fight an enemy who is closer than they ever imagined….

Review:
Soooo, this was not good. But not good in a the-genre-has-grown-up sort of way. This book is from 2006 and just like bodice rippers are out of style in the romance genre, I think the sort of plotting in this book has gone out of style in the paranormal romance genre. We readers just expect so much more now than a thinly defined Other enemy of paranormal origin, a characterless alpha hero and a sweet little thing heroine. Maybe this would have been enough when there weren’t a lot of other PNR books around, but not anymore.

The enemies from across the ill-defined border are literally just called Others and the reader learn almost nothing about them except that they’re evil in some way that effects the environment. But even this little bit of information is compromised at the end and maybe wrong. (A “twist” I saw coming from the beginning.) The hero has no history or character beyond alpha-asshole warrior man. The heroine has a little more, but not much. The romance is instant, except that they’ve known one another for three years. So, I still have no idea why they suddenly had this sudden, irresistible attraction to one another. And the book has a bad case of sex=love. They have sex and suddenly they’re in love. The villain? Totally obvious (as is the bigger villain that is carrying over to the series). [Spoiler] If you are told the bad guy is a guard and only one guard in the whole book shows up more than once and is given a name, that’s the bad guy.

All in all, the mechanical writing and editing is fine. This was apparently Morgan’s first book and there are tons now, so I’m willing to give her another chance, maybe with something a little more recent. Plus, I do have three more Paladin of Darkness books to read.