Tag Archives: urban fantasy

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Book Review: Love Bites, by Cynthia St. Aubin

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I picked up a copy of Cynthia St. Aubin‘s Love Bites when it was an Amazon freebie recently.

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A girl’s gotta eat—and so do her three cats. Recently divorced art history grad student Hanna Harvey has just fibbed her way into a job as the assistant to dangerously drool-worthy art gallery owner Mark Abernathy. For Hanna, working in the field she desperately loves provides the perfect opportunity to begin putting her life back together. Soon her cheese budget is in the black and her feline life partners are no longer eyeing her like a six-foot can of Fancy Feast.

But when her boss’s lady friends start turning up dead, Hanna finds herself in the cross hairs of a murder investigation. Even worse, hunky homicide detective James Morrison fears hers might be the next body he discovers.

With the “help” of the gallery’s quirky cast of resident artists, Hanna will have to hunt down the truth about Abernathy’s dark secret—before it hunts her.

my review

I’m going to start with a complaint. The title has no relevance to the story. Sure, it’s pithy and sharp, but there is no love or romance in the book. The main character hooks up with one guy and there’s a another that she’d like to, but there is no romance or even thoughts of love. Nor is there anyone who is love-averse such that the term Love Bites might be inferred to be in the pejorative. I understand the author has a naming convention going on with the series (Love BLANKs), but a title of Love Bites has no relevance to the story in this actual book.

Ok, moving past my admittedly pedantic complaint…I enjoyed this. I thought it was a lot of fun. I appreciated Hanna’s sense of humor and the banter between her and most everyone. Sure, there was a lot of “no one would actually say that in that situation,” but I’m not reading an urban fantasy book for the realism of it. Hanna and crew made me smile.

And while I might comment that there’s no love in the story yet, I did very much liked that Hanna was allowed to have a hook up (even sans love interest), enjoy it, and I didn’t have to sit through any passages of shame (be it from her or anyone else). She was just allowed to be a sexual adult and I appreciated the simplicity of it.

The book does end just about the time the plot looks like it might be moving past set-up. But I’d be happy to leap into the next book.

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Other Reviews:

https://storytellersbymarlou.wordpress.com/2020/11/03/love-bites-by-cynthia-st-aubin-book-review/

https://www.dreamcomereview.com/arc-review-once-upon-a-werewolf-by-cynthia-st-aubin/

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Book Review: Three Half Goats Gruff & Dragons Don’t Eat Meat, by Kim McDougall

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I had several loads of laundry to fold yesterday. So, I borrowed an audio copy of Kim McDouGall’s Valkyrie Bestiary through Hoopla. It included the prequel Three Half Goats Gruff (which I actually have a Kindle copy of) and Dragons Don’t Eat Meat and was narrated by Hollie Jackson.

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Three Half Goats Gruff:

Is he a vampire? A shifter? Something worse? Thrown together to save a middle school from an infestation of satyrs, Kyra and the mysterious Captain of the Guardians share one heart-stopping night.

Critter wrangling rule #4: There isn’t much you can’t kill, confuse, or disgust with a can of bug fogger.

my review

At only 45 pages, this is was only a taster of the series to come. But it was enough to know I’d like the main character, Kyra, and the writing of the series at large. Plus, how cute is that cover!?

Dragon’s Don’t Eat Meat:

Someone is killing dragons. And the killings point to a civil war brewing among the fae.

When Kyra finds an abandoned baby dragon, she doesn’t want to bring him home. But until she can hunt down his thunder and stop the dragon killers, she’s on babysitting duty.

As a pest controller with a soft heart, Kyra already has an apartment full of rescues, including a basilisk who thinks he’s a turkey, a banshee nanny, and even a pygmy kraken. She might take care of them, but they also fill her need for family. And when that family is threatened, she’ll risk everything to save them. She’ll even join forces with the handsome and irritating captain of the city’s vigilante Guardians, who never fails to be around at her most undignified moments.

Along with a quirky cast of misfits and unruly critters, Kyra leaves the safety of Montreal Ward and travel through the dangerous Inbetween—the land beyond the protected city states, where magic is the only rule of law—to reunite the lost dragon with his thunder and stop a new and sinister force from invading their home.
my reviewI enjoyed this. I liked Kyra and her menagerie quite a lot. The world was interesting. I thought the writing readable and the narrator did a good job with the audio version. I didn’t feel like I got to know Mason as well as I’d have liked and at times the adventure felt a little go here-do that random, while the overarching plot a little predictable. Plus, in a post-apocalyptic world where travel was dangerous and limited and fossil fuels were no longer allowed, there seemed to be an awful lot of people not from the area in the area (lots of individuals with Welsh or Irish accents for example) and I wondered how they got there. Magic, maybe, but it wasn’t addressed. I still enjoyed the experience quite a lot though and will continue the series. Though not immediately, as I’ve other commitments to attend to.

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Other Reviews:

Books and Pals – Review: Dragon’s Don’t Eat Meat

 

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Book Review: Cold read, by Renee Joiner

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I borrowed an audio copy of Renee Joiner’s Cold Read through Hoopla.

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His future is in her hands….

Tasia Jackson is a psychic working occasional cases with the police department and the rare one-off for an old friend at the FBI. Her real business is super-secret because even the government doesn’t know just how powerful and dangerous she is and what she can actually do. Her FBI friend Daniel Cordeiro probably has his suspicions, but he’s never voiced them until she gets a strange vision of him pleading for her help.

Daniel’s latest case is a run-of-the-mill missing persons, but it’s personal this time. It’s his missing person, his sister, and he’s desperate to beat the 48-hour clock imposed by her kidnapper. So, he goes it alone and gets himself in deep trouble. His hail-Mary hope is Tasia and the powers she is afraid to fully use. He can only pray she hears him when he calls….

Can Tasia tap into things she knows are better left alone in time to save innocent lives, or will her dangerous magic do them all more harm than good?

my review

I wouldn’t say this was bad, just thin. There’s a plot, but there’s not much to it. There’s a world, but it’s not overly robust. There’s the bare bones of a romance, but it’s not particularly developed. There’s a mystery, but it’s not elaborate. I think this would have really benefited from an additional 100 pages and the extra meat that would have allowed the author to give the book.

I thought Kate Poels—the narrator—did a passable job. But the accents are pretty inconsistent. And lastly, I like the cover a lot (it’s what convinced me to pick the book up), but it doesn’t accurately represent the story. The heroine shepherds the life energies of the dead and has visions/prophetic dreams. She doesn’t read tarot cards or use any circle based or academic magic (as the books on the cover would suggest). I don’t suppose it’s a big deal, but it did lead me to expect something entirely different than what’s actually in the book.

All in all, I’d probably read another Joiner book, but she’s not making the favorites list based on this showing.

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