Tag Archives: self published

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Book Review: Murder at the UFO Festival, by Kaja Fivecrows

I picked up a copy of Murder at the UFO Festival by Kaja Fivecrows as an Amazon freebie.

murder at the ufo festival cover

“Having only one husband? In this economy?”

34-year-old Alexandria Bellecourt runs her small-town Oregon bed & breakfast like a well-oiled machine, with her severe, harsh husband Grayson in charge of finances and her warm, friendly husband Greg in charge of promotions.

But all this organization goes down the toilet during the annual UFO Festival. Alexandria doesn’t realize that hidden among the psychics, aura readers, and alien abductees, one of her guests is an abrasive skeptic with a lot of enemies. After he threatens to expose her other guests as frauds, he gets stabbed in the back, seriously disrupting brunch.

Her bed & breakfast is suddenly plunged headlong into a murder investigation, and Alexandria has a lot on her plate already, like why isn’t the guillotine working for her husband Greg’s amateur play and why does her husband Grayson have a suspicious amount of combat skills for an accountant?

When the rest of her guests start getting targeted one by one, Alexandria is going to have to go undercover at the UFO Festival to find out who the culprit is. Can she and her husbands discover who the murderer is before getting targeted themselves or, even worse, getting a bad guest review?

my review

This was OK. I enjoyed it well enough. I did, however, find the characterization shallow. The reader is not given anywhere near enough background on the characters or their situation to feel satisfied. Don’t get me wrong, I liked them, Grayson especially. But they are cardboard cutouts more than fleshed-out characters.

While the mystery was entertaining, I rather suspect the story of how Grey, Grayson, and Alexandria met and evolved into the throuple we meet here would be a more interesting story than what the reader is offered in this book, which would be fine if that book existed. But as far as I can see, it doesn’t, which means the reader feels its lack. Further, I quibble that this doesn’t qualify as Why Choose as there is no choosing involved. The throuple is established and comfortably married before the book even starts. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Lastly, the merging of cozy mystery and an attempt at spice didn’t really work. The sex scenes felt shoehorned in and often out of place. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover this was written as a cozy mystery and the author later went back and added the sex scenes to try and catch a broader audience. All in all, I’d read another, but it isn’t topping a favorites list.
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Other Reviews:

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Book Review: Fighting Destiny, by Amelia Hutchins

I picked up a freebie copy of Amelia HutchinsFighting Destiny way back in 2015. Since then, it has come to my attention several times, either in an ad or just scrolling my TBR, etc. I finally just decided to give it a read.

fighting destiny cover

Have you ever heard of the old Celtic legends of the Fae – beautiful, magical, deadly and a love of messing with humans just for kicks and giggles?
Welcome to my world.

What started out as a strange assignment, leads to one of the most gruesome murder mysteries of our times and my friends and I are set and determined to find out who is killing off Fae and Witches alike.

Couple of problems in the way – I hate the Fae and the Prince of the Dark Fae is bound and determined that I work for him. He’s a rude, overbearing egotistical ass with a compulsive need to possess, dominate and control me. Oh – did I mention that he is absolutely sex-on-a-stick gorgeous and he makes me feel things that I never ever wanted to feel for a Fae…every time he touches me or looks at me with those golden eyes seems to pull me further in under his spell, despite my better judgment.

My friends and I can’t trust anyone and nothing is as it seems on the surface – not even me.

my review

Meh. The writing here was fine. But I simply did not like the book. Mostly, I did not like the love interest. Yes, I understand the idea of dark romance and enemies to lovers, etc. Here’s the thing, though: even in dark enemies-to-lovers romances, the reader needs to feel that no matter how dark and dangerous the male lead may be, the heroine is ultimately safe from him. I never got that sense here. Plus, there has to come a point in the book in which the male lead goes from enemy to lover and redeems his previous actions. I never reached that point in this book. They went from not having sex to having sex, but not to lovers. Even at 85%, he was still doing things I could not forgive him for. And at 99%, the author was still submitting the heroine to things I could not forgive her (the author) for.

What’s more, the whole book skimms over the fact that the fae are rapists—all of them. The author plays loose and fast with this fact, but it’s an unavoidable truth of the species as written. And, given the coercive contract and fae ability to subsume someone’s free will, I never felt the heroine had the autonomy to choose to engage in most of the acts she did. I understand dub-con and non-con stories. I do. I even enjoy them on occasion. But it’s a difficult sell and a book that doesn’t manage to walk the thin line of a hero who is willing to engage in non-con acts while still being redeemable compromises itself fully. This was exacerbated by how willing he was to threaten the use of further rape (while pretending it’s something else) but to do so when it is literally her greatest fear in life, based on extreme past trauma.

fighting destiny photoSure, I’m interested in the mysteries. But I’m not willing to read another however many pages of story in which the author ignores that the very characters we’re supposed to engage with are remorseless (and probably frequent) rapists. Let me be clear before someone comes at me with, ‘Don’t read dark romance then’ or some such. It’s the fact that the author is writing certain world and character traits while similtaneously pretending she isn’t and expecting the reader to do the same that is at issue, not the dark elements themselves. I will not be continuing the series.


Other Reviews:

Vicarious Book Reviews: Fighting Destiny by Amelia Hutchins

Fighting Destiny by Amelia Hutchins – Book and Audio Review

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Book Review: The Umbra King, by Jamie Applegate Hunter

I picked up a copy of Jamie Applegate Hunter‘s The Umbra King as an Amazon freebie. The author is quite active on TikTok. So, she’d passed my feed numerous times, and I was tempted.

The morally grey don’t want redemption. They want retribution.

After the brutal murder of her twin sister, Aurora “Rory” Raven spends years forging herself into a ruthless vigilante killer.

She never gave up her search for the man who killed her sister, but when she is convicted of thirteen murders and sentenced to five-hundred years in Vincula, the prison realm, she knows her sister’s death will never be avenged.

After arriving in Vincula, Aurora discovers her opportunity for retribution is closer than she thought.

Caius is the notorious Umbra King, ruler of Vincula, King of the Monsters, and the thing nightmares are made of. After being locked in his own realm for a crime he didn’t commit, his only focus has been revenge.

But when Aurora drops into his throne room, representing everything he despises, they begin a game of cat and mouse, and before long, their hatred turns into something else.

Circumstances draw them together, but revenge might tear them apart.

my review*Spoiler warning*

I seem to be in the minority, but I did not enjoy this. In fact, I own both books in the duology, but I’m not going to bother reading book two (and I hate leaving things unfinished). I will preface my complaints with the fact that the writing is fine. The book is perfectly readable (if overly long). I just didn’t like it.

I have several issues that all sort of roll up together. For one, despite the spice, this book felt juvenile to me. There are just too many scenes of hanging out with friends like carefree youths to match the intended seriousness of the story. Some of that hanging out is doing things like having a foot race to the treehouse, like kids. So, when I say that the tone of some parts doesn’t match others, I’m serious. The heroine is a serial killer, let me remind you.

Second, Rory shows up in what is essentially a cushy prison and is instantly treated differently than anyone else. She gets away with things no one else can, even before anyone realizes she’s a fated mate to the king. This begs the question, is she able to get away with things because she’s special, or is the fact that she’s special based on the fact that she gets away with things? The order matters because, in one scenario, the reader is left wondering why she is being given allowances no one else is when no reason (besides being the heroine) is provided. It’s a disconnect. The reader is basically being told how special she is and not at all being shown her being special; it’s the circumstances that are special.

Last and most importantly, a two-parter: You know what trope I hate more than any other trope in the whole world? It’s the scorned women as the villain trope. This trope is largely straight-up misogyny. It’s centuries of women being told they can’t trust one another, that sex is a resource that can be used to garner another resource (a man). Thus, that resource can be stolen by other women and must be guarded. Failing that, the loss can be vindicated. I HATE THIS TROPE WITH A BURNING FIERY PASSION. It makes my heart hurt when female authors write it. We—the entire female population—deserve better.

Hunter leans into this hard in this book and doesn’t do it with any subtly. The transactional nature of the scorned lover’s sexual appetite is wholly apparent. She is not only a scorned lover. She is a scorned lover who was only a lover to stand close to power. She then used her sexuality to manipulate other men into trying to remove her obstacle to returning to the king’s bed. Imagine a tree with all the plots imaginable at your fingertips and choosing to reach for the one hanging closest to the ground. She also has absolutely zero depth or character outside of this one-dimensional misogynistic presentation.

But the use of the scorned lover trope is problematic in this book for a second reason too. I’m not 100% sure how to express this. But I’ll do my best.

Hunter sets up what is a pretty complex world. (I could quibble with the stability and consistency of the world, but I’ll set that aside.) The world is geographically small but consists of several sorts of magics, three realms, multiple layers of deities, etc. She provides a serial killer heroine with a fairly intricate backstory and a tragic, dark king as a love interest. It’s a big, complex world that is staged for a big, complex plot. Then, Hunter wrote a small, tight, personally vindictive story that we’ve all read a million times before and utilized none of the complexity available to it.

The world, as written, should be supporting inter-realm intrigue, including assassinations and Machiavellian machinations. Instead, we’re given a jealous ex-girlfriend, innumerable drinks at the bar with bubbly friends, and more staircases than I can count. We still have the murders and attempted assassinations, oddly, but they don’t fit in with a small-scale plot. Sure, the ex the umbra king photomight be a mean girl, but leaping to murder feels super forced and out of place in the context of the plot. Those attempted murders feel like they should be coming from large, political-level players, not the king’s ex-fleshlight with a face. The ex-girlfriend as a villain was simply too mundane and unimportant to fit with the rest of Hunter’s story structure. It felt dwarfed by its surroundings. Why, for example, do I need a multiple-page world guide for a story that might as well be set in a high school?

All in all, this one was a great big ol’ flop for me.


Other Reviews:

I can’t decide which to include. So, here is a whole list of reviews: The Umbra King Reviews