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Book Review of Blood Ice & Oak Moon: A Coon Hollow Coven Tale, by Marsha A. Moore

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I won an audible copy of Marsha A. Moore’s Blood Ice & Oak Moon.

Description from Goodreads:
Esme Underhill is about to discover a darkness hidden inside her that could destroy her chance for independence and possibly kill her.

Esme’s mother took her young daughter away from Southern Indiana’s Coon Hollow Coven to prevent her from learning about the unusual witchcraft she had inherited. When Esme is twenty-seven, her beloved Grammy Flora passes away and leaves her property in the Hollow to her granddaughter. With this opportunity to remake her life and gain independence, Esme attempts to emulate Grammy Flora as a wildwood mystic who relies on the hedge world of faeries to locate healing herbs. But fae are shrewd traders. When they open their world to her, she must meet the unknown malevolence of her birthright.

Thayne, the handsome king of the fae Winter Court, faces his own struggle to establish autonomy as a new regent. He is swept into the tempest of Esme’s unfolding powers, a dangerous threat to his court. His sworn duty is to protect his people, despite Esme’s beauty and allure, which tear at his resolve.

Both Esme’s and Thayne’s dreams of personal freedom are lost…unless they can trust each other and overcome surmounting dangers.

Review:
Sigh. This may just be a case of a book being poorly matched to a reader, but I didn’t much care for this. It wasn’t all out bad, but it wasn’t great either. If I had to break the review of my experience with this down to one statement, it would be both the book and the audio narration (by Jean Lowe Carlson) were only ok. Neither very good, but not all out bad either, or at least not to my liking.

I found the writing, especially the dialogue really stilted and stiff. This was apparent in the actual writing, but I think it was exacerbated by the way it was read by Carison.

Some people will probably like this kind of Mary Sue heroine, but I don’t see the appeal. She was 27, but the book reads like it is YA. Esmerelda was constantly on about becoming (not being, but becoming) and independent woman. Despite this, she was also always moaning about her mom, or daddy or grammy. And in the end, wanna know what she felt made her feel more independent than anything ever did before? Getting married. Arg, someone get me a drink STAT! And this after spending most of the book all cut up because of one bad past relationship. It was cliched.

She also defeated an all-powerful enemy with presumably hundreds of years of training and experience in less than a page with no training or experience of her own. I won’t quite call it deus ex mechana, because she had the power already. But I also couldn’t believe it.

I felt no chemistry between Esmeralda and Thayne and at no point did I see their relationship develop. They were just in love all of a sudden and she was being handed a princess’ happily ever after for no apparent reason.

I didn’t truly understand why her and her black amber were so sought after. I have no idea what the underlying motivation of at least one of the villains was, and only a vague idea about the others. (And why have so many independent enemies?) And at one point an established dictum of the universe, that fae can’t lie, is broken.

All in all, this is a strong case of ‘special snowflake’ heroine and I didn’t care for it. But I bet others really will.

Book Review of 12 Hours of Daylight, by Tameka Mullins

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I won a copy of Tameka Mullins‘ 12 Hours of Daylight through Goodreads:

Description:
He pops like nobody’s business… 

Jason’s got it all: beautiful women, fast cars and piles of cash. With a job that literally keeps him up all night, this Channing Tatum lookalike is living the X-rated Hollywood dream. Any twenty-two-year-old guy would jump at the chance to star in Jason’s life…except Jason. 

…when he’s not playing Pops in real life. 

All in one night, Jason became a father and lost the love of his life. Vickie, his chocolate princess, isn’t looking down from heaven with pride, though. What started as an unconventional way to pay the bills has devolved into an obsession and an escape from crippling guilt. 

Raising twins alone is a full-time job, but with no other options, Jason doesn’t have a lot of time to look for a way out. Yet it all comes crashing down one night when the sometimes dangerous, addictive world of porn collides with the pressures of fatherhood. As Jason’s dreams spin out of control, he’ll have to make some changes in his life or risk losing everything he’s already sold his body to hold onto. 

Review:
Awesome cover, interesting idea, but not well executed. I generally hate the dictum to show not tell. I think it’s overused as a critique. But there is no getting around the fact that stories that are predominantly written in ‘tell’ are harder to connect to. Sometimes there are enough other elements to overcome this, usually there isn’t. Here, in 12 Hours of Daylight, being a novella, there is almost nothing. Which means I never felt connected to Jason and we’re not given any other characters to even try getting to know. Even at the point where Jason needs advice, he calls in an old friend that the reader doesn’t know, who then basically disappears again.

All this combined with the stiff dialogue (names are used far too often) creates a story that feels like it’s being blandly recited, with Jason’s porn gigs functioning as an excuse for some menage type sex scenes that contribute little to the already thin plot, spicing things up. There is a minor upheaval and then everything miraculously fixes itself off-page and the reader is told about it after the fact.

All in all, I think this really could have been something special.  As is, it’s not bad.  I liked the inter-racial aspect of the relationships. I liked the narrative voice. But I think it needs a lot more to really catch a readers attention.

What I’m drinking: Regular old Bigelow Chinese Oolong Tea. It’s my go-to cuppa. But honestly, not long after I took that picture, I realized I was wasting a beautiful day and took myself outside to read in a lawn-chair with a ginormous bowl of buttered popcorn. Ahh, spring!

Book Review of I Died In A Bed Of Roses, by Kevin Strange

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I won a copy of Kevin Strange‘s I Died on a Bed of Roses through Goodreads.

Description:
Cult horror filmmaker Brian Sully has isolated himself to a simple life on the Oregon coast after being publicly shamed by the lead actress of his most recent B-Movie monster flick for sending her pictures of his dick. Brian’s years of isolation have left him on the brink of suicide. But after his best friend and producer books him at a 20th anniversary horror festival honoring their first feature film, Brian Sully’s life is about to change. Is true love real? What if you fell in love with something not quite… Human? Would you pursue it? Would you let anything stop you? Even death? I DIED IN A BED OF ROSES is Kevin Strange’s first ever crack at the paranormal romance genre. But if you’re expecting a mushy love story, well, you don’t know Kevin Strange!

Review:
I’m never entirely sure how to review bizaro fiction, let alone bizaro horror, because it’s, you know, bizarre. This one starts out pretty well, which was a relief. The cover left me fearing it might just turn into male-centric wank fodder. (It doesn’t. It’s very male-centric, but not a wank fest.) I’m afraid it does peter out though, veering off into a rushed, simplistic, deus ex mechana climax and ending. This is maybe not surprising, since the author says in the beginning that the book was written during a weeklong writing retreat and the beginning was birthed more easily than the end. It’s not bad. It’s actually pretty finny at times. But I think this will definitely be a case of finding the right reader for the book.

……Ok, I just want to say wank one more time.