2 Book Lovers Reviews
.
Week of June 29th, 2020
Book Review:
The Only Good Indians
By Stephen Graham Jones
Releasing July 14th!
Stories are written in a time and place, they have meaning for the author when they are written; sometimes they can take on a different meaning for the reader depending on the time when they are read, things can change between the writing and the reading.
*See my full review...
Week of June 15th, 2020
Book Review:
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
By Grady Hendrix
I’ve been intending to get around to a Grady Hendrix book for a while now, I’ve got a couple of them on my Kindle, but with all that I’ve got going on, and his newest book out on Audible, I decided to enjoy it on my daily commutes. What a great decision I made!
*See my full review...
Week of June 8th, 2020
Book Review:
Shakespeare for Squirrels
By Christopher Moore
I would call myself a fan of Christopher Moore, yes, this is only the third book of his that I have read, but the other two really hit home for me. I love how Moore can create complete ridiculousness and craft a captivating story around it. I even did my homework in preparation for Shakespeare for Squirrels by reading, for the first time, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
*See my full review...
Week of June 1st, 2020
Releasing June 2nd!
The Guest List
By Lucy Foley
The author of The Hunting Party!
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one...
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human...
And then someone turns up dead.
*Read more...
Week of May 25th, 2020
Book Review:
The Glass Hotel
By Emily St. John Mandel
I was intrigued by the premise of The Glass Hotel, I’ve heard a lot of great things about Station Eleven and I had an Audible credit burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought what better time than to dive into The Glass Hotel.
*See my full review...
Week of May 19th, 2020
Book Review:
The Book of Koli
By M.R. Carey
The first thing with apocalyptic/dystopian fiction is the author needs to make it new and different, no one wants to read about a group of people stuck in a shopping mall surrounded by zombies or a young girl who volunteers to put her life at risk to save her little sister. We’ve been there; we’ve done that. The second thing is that it has to be about the characters.
*See my full review...
Week of May 11th, 2020
My Next Listen!
Goldilocks
By Laura Lam
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Martian!
...Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.
It's humanity's last hope for survival...
But when things start going wrong on the ship, Naomi begins to suspect that someone on board is concealing a terrible secret.
*Read more...
Week of April 27th, 2020
Book Review:
The Deep
By Alma Katsu
As far as I can tell, Alma Katsu has a thing. Her thing is that she takes historical events, adds a bit of the supernatural and creates a fantastic, yet unexpected story with it. That’s a thing that works really well for me.
Most great stories have a kind of “why in the hell would you do that” moment. For The Deep, that moment is when a survivor of the Titanic would take a job on its sister ship, the Britannic.
*See my full review...
Week of April 13th, 2020
Book Review:
Things in Jars
By Jess Kidd
Things in Jars was a tough one for me, I started reading it as this whole COVID-19 stuff started going on. It ended up taking me a month to read the book, not because I didn’t enjoy Kidd’s writing, not because she didn’t take me away from the horrors of reality; I was distracted.
*See my full review...
Week of April 6th, 2020
Releasing April 7th!
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
By Grady Hendrix
Steel Magnolias meets Dracula!
Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club..
*Read more...
Week of March 30th, 2020
Releasing March 31st!
Devoted
By Dean Koontz
Woody Bookman hasn’t spoken a word in his eleven years of life. Not when his father died in a freak accident. Not when his mother, Megan, tells him she loves him. For Megan, keeping her boy safe and happy is what matters. But Woody believes a monstrous evil was behind his father’s death and now threatens him and his mother. And he’s not alone in his thoughts. An ally unknown to him is listening...
*Read more....
Week of March 23rd, 2020
New Release & My Next Listen!
The Glass Hotel
By Emily St. John Mandel
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it's the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: "Why don't you swallow broken glass..."
*Read more....
Week of March 16th, 2020
Book Review:
The Sun Down Motel
By Simone St. James
We’ve all seen them on a road trip or family vacation, every town has one right on the pre-Interstate Highway system, the roadside motel. They were a place to stop and get a few winks on your way from point A to point B. In this day and age of chain hotels and frequent flyer plans, the old roadside motel has taken a hit.
*See my full review....
Week of March 9th, 2020
Book Review:
Ilium
By Dan Simmons
Can a science fiction book set in the future, also be an alternate history story at the same time?
Dan Simmons likes to take on some monolithic challenges. Ilium starts off with three separate storylines. I know they are going to come together, they have to come together, what would be the point if they don’t come together. The true beauty of this story is how they come together.
*See my full review....
Week of March 2nd, 2020
Book Review:
The Wives
By Tarryn Fisher
This one came highly recommended to me by someone very close to me, my wife. I had been hearing for quite some
time, “You will really love it.” Then as luck would have it, I won a copy through a Goodreads giveaway, winner, winner, chicken dinner!
*See my full review....
This week's list of new
releases is posted below.
Let's read!
Reading After You felt like
being reacquainted with an
old friend. I’m not sure why
I waited so long to read this
book, I’m just really glad that
I finally did.
I fell back easily and
comfortably into Louisa’s life.
It takes place eighteen
months after Will’s death
and Louisa is still struggling
with her grief. It brought
everything back to the forefront of my mind. I remembered their short but meaningful time together, his wishes for her, and their final goodbyes. Will wanted Louisa to live her life to the fullest, to get out there and experience the world, but after traveling around Europe for a spell, she found herself back in England feeling as lost and stagnant as she ever had. To make matters worse, a horrific accident meant that she had to return to her family’s home to recuperate.
New Releases!
Rachel Watson has it all worked out. By 30, she's ticked off most of the goals on her Life List. She's a home owner, a partner at her law firm, she has a gorgeous boyfriend, lots of hobbies and loads of good friends. The only thing that's missing is a ring on her finger.
According to her Life List, Rachel should be getting hitched around now, so when her boyfriend, Paul, plans a romantic date, Rachel's pretty confident he’s going to propose. Except Paul has other ideas. He's jetting off to India to find himself.
Distraught, Rachel doesn’t know what to do. Not one to easily admit defeat, she embarks on a mission to win him back.
Flying solo to India is definitely not part of Rachel's plans, but could her trip teach her unexpected lessons about love, life and herself? Could she realise that perhaps her Life List wasn't exactly what she wanted, after all?
- Waiting for Forever – By Jessica Prince
- Mr. Knightsbridge – By Louise Bay
Dexter Daniels prefers gems over women. Emeralds over girlfriends. Diamonds over marriage.
He might be the most successful jeweler of his generation, a loyal friend and some say the most handsome man in London, but his past means he doesn’t deal in love.
When Hollie Lumen enters the ballroom where exquisite royal jewels are on display, she brings Dexter’s world to a screeching halt. Despite her hand-me-down dress and borrowed shoes, Hollie is even more stunning than the jewelry. Feisty, funny and ferociously independent, she’s all Dexter can see.
Hollie Lumen can’t catch a break. She thought an internship in London was her chance to escape her responsibilities back in Oregon and for her dreams to come true. When she’s fired only a few weeks after touching down, she’s ready to give up and go home. Hollie never asks for help. She knows the only person she can rely on is herself.
So what’s she going to do about the tall, dark, handsome stranger who keeps rescuing her?
She’s going to rescue him right back.
Releasing on July 7th!
- Lead Me Back – By C.D. Reiss - Rock star romance!
Cutting all ties, Kayla Montgomery drives cross-country to Los Angeles. New start. New life. And an unexpected new job: assistant to Justin Beckett.
The Justin Beckett.
The boy band rebel with the cocky attitude and dreamy bed head who casts a spell over his fans and tests the patience of his handlers.
Now at the peak of Mount Adulthood, he has to build a clean-cut, movie star image. It’s in his contract. No partying. No attitude. No groupies.
To tie it together, he needs a normal girl.
Suddenly, Kayla’s swept up in Justin’s glamorous world, and his arms. But the most dizzying thing is Justin himself. Sweet, generous, reliable, and as eager to shed his past as Kayla is hers.
About that…
Those ties she thought she’d cut? They’ve followed her across the country with her secrets in tow, and they’re about to test Kayla’s courage, Justin’s loyalty, and a love that wasn’t part of the deal.
- Boyfriend Material – By Alexis Hall – M/M romance!
Wanted:
One (fake) boyfriend
Practically perfect in every way
Luc O'Donnell is tangentially—and reluctantly—famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.
To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship...and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he's never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.
But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that's when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don't ever want to let them go.
- Not Like the Movies – By Kerry Winfrey
What happens when your life is a rom-com . . . but you don’t even believe in true love?
Chloe Sanderson is an optimist, and not because her life is easy. As the sole caregiver for her father, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s, she’s pretty much responsible for everything. She has no time—or interest—in getting swept up in some dazzling romance. Not like her best friend, Annie, who literally wrote a rom-com that’s about to premiere in theaters across America . . . and happens to be inspired by Chloe and her cute but no-nonsense boss, Nick Velez.
As the buzz for the movie grows, Chloe reads one too many listicles about why Nick is the perfect man, and now she can’t see him as anything but Reason #4: The scruffy-bearded hunk who’s always there when you need him. But unlike the romance Annie has written for them, Chloe isn’t so sure her own story will end in a happily-ever-after.
- The Shadows – By Alex North – Horror!
You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile--always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet--and inspired more than one copycat.
Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree--and his victim--were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and suffering from dementia, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.
It's not long before things start to go wrong. Paul learns that Detective Amanda Beck is investigating another copycat that has struck in the nearby town of Featherbank. His mother is distressed, insistent that there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.
It wasn't just the murder.
It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again...
- One More Step: Bookworm Box Anthology – All profits will go to charities. Each of the twenty-six authors featured in this anthology were given the same first sentence. Where they took that first sentence was completely up to them. Every story is different. No story is related.
- You Again – By Debra Jo Immergut – Thriller!
- Diamond in the Rough – By Skye Warren
- Side Trip – By Kerry Lonsdale
With her deceased sister’s Route 66 bucket list in hand, California girl Joy Evers sets out on a cross-country road trip to meet up with her fiancé, checking off the bullets along the way.
Singer-songwriter Dylan Westfield has a serious case of wanderlust and a broken-down car. Stuck at a diner between LA and Flagstaff, he meets Joy, his complete opposite. She’s energetic. He’s moody. She’s by the book. He’s spontaneous. She believes in love at first sight. He thinks love is a complicated mess. But Joy has a brand-new convertible.
They strike a deal. She’ll drive him to New York. He’ll pay for gas. Only three rules apply: no exchanging of last names; what happens on the road, stays on the road; and if one of them wants to take a side trip, they both must agree.
- The Beginning of Everything (The Rising #1) – By Kristen Ashley - Fantasy romance!
- Burn Our Bodies Down – By Rory Power - Thriller!
Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot's questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.
But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for.
Margot's mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there?
The only thing Margot knows for sure is there's poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she's there, she might never escape.
- The Day She Came Back – By Amanda Prowse
- Absolute Trust (Absolute Power Duet #2) – By Jeana E. Mann
Releasing Later This Week!
- July 8 – Love Disregarded – By Rachel Blaufeld
When I first met Aston Prescott, I thought I’d be able to let go of him.
I was naive.
He belonged to the country club where I worked, and despite the vast difference in our social status, I still fell for him. I thought he fell for me too, and that our love would overcome any obstacles.
But our relationship was discounted by everyone around us. Our families didn’t support us, and our friends avoided us.
So we moved on with our lives, but then everything fell apart.
The man who once abandoned me is now seeking comfort in my arms, and this time, I’m not sure if I can give in.
Because if I do, I may never be able to let him go again.
- July 9 – If I Can’t Have You – By Charlotte Levin
Samuel, the day we met I knew I’d finally found what I’ve been waiting for.
You.
Happiness, at last.
Then you left me.
And now I am alone.
Everyone I love leaves in the end.
But not this time.
I’m not giving up on us.
I’m not giving up on you.
When you love someone, you never let them go.
That’s why for me, this is just beginning.
- July 9 – Before I Die – By Nikki Ash – Romantic suspense!
- July 10 – Am I the Only One – By E.K. Blair – Thriller!
Desperation had a flavor.
It was all Emma could taste as her life in Washington DC started to crumble before her.
In a city filled with prestige and American dreams also lay political fallacy and corruption—corruption she would soon find herself indulging in.
Emma would have done anything to save herself from the downfall, gone to any length, sacrificed her soul if needed.
What she didn’t realize was that someone else was more desperate to save their own life and that the worst was yet to come.
- July 10 – No Reservations – By Stephanie Rose
Happy Reading!
The Wolf in the Whale
By Jordanna Max Brodsky
The All-Night Sun
By Diane Zinna
Week of July 6/20
What he's reading!
What she's reading!