Cloaked by Rachel Kovaciny

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult, Christian
Genre: Western, Fairy Tale
Content: Clean



Mary Rose feels uneasy around Mr. Linden from the moment she meets him on the stagecoach ride to her grandmother's ranch in Wyoming Territory. But he works for her grandmother, so that means he's trustworthy, doesn't it?

She tries to ignore her suspicions until one night, she discovers his real reason for being at the ranch. Now, if she's going to save her grandmother -- and herself -- she's going to need to run faster than she's ever run before.

2.5 stars. Cloaked is a re-telling of Red Riding Hood and that's what drew me to it in the first place. I usually love reading re-tellings of that story, but unfortunately this one fell flat for me. I thought maybe it would include a supernatural aspect to it, but this is straight up western, which isn't really my thing. I don't know how to define this other than that. It's not really a romance, but there is romance in it. It also isn't really a mystery, although there is a slight mystery to it. However, it's easy to figure out what Mr. Linden is up to, and it's pointed out from the very beginning that he's a suspicious person. This was really short at 143 pages, but it felt longer because it was very slow moving and rather boring. This is the first book in what will be a series. If I could guess I would say a companion series. I will not be continuing on with the series though, because I just didn't enjoy this enough.



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Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-fi, Space Opera
Content: Strong Language


I read this book three years ago and I thought I would share my review of it on my blog since I'm about to read the second book in the series in December and I've recommended the TV series to quite a few friends.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Leviathan Wakes is a mix of space opera and Noir which brought to mind Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams, and those hard-boiled detective type books as well. The prologue drew me in immediately, I was really interested in Julie and how she was going to get out of the situation she was in. Unfortunately we don't find that out for a huge chunk of the book. We are introduced to Holden and Miller in the first chapter of the book and they both came up a bit short for me. Holden and Miller were both the polar opposite of each other. I really had a hard time liking either of them or caring what happened to them for a while. The book was so much better when they finally met and teamed up.

Miller was very cynical, but smart and observant. But his being in love with a woman he doesn't even know was ridiculous. Love may not be the right word. More like obsessed. He becomes obsessed with solving the case of the missing Julie Mao and in turn obsessed with her. I guess we can blame it on the fact that he is a really messed up drunk. He was really hard to like in the beginning, but by the end I was crying for him.

Holden was the naive idealist who has good intentions, but messes everything up because he sees everything too black and white. Honestly I really hate when the "good" guy is characterized this way. Holden does eventually learn a few things and becomes less annoying and more likable later in the book.

A couple of other small complaints I have about the book would be: Do I really care or need to know what is happening to their certain body parts when they hit a certain amount of Gs? No...no I don't. And I don't care about the fact that they have catheters stuck in them in the med bay either. Too many references to body parts. It just seemed a bit juvenile for the writers to keep going there. Also there is a big revelation that Miller has near the end of the book that I feel should have happened long before it did, I figured out early on in the book what was happening to those people who got infected. For Miller to be characterized as someone so smart and observant about people, he really wasn't too smart and observant there.

With those negatives out of the way I will say that I thought the story was good and there are a lot of layers to peel back in upcoming books. Overall I liked the book. It didn't blow me away, but it wasn't bad either.

 
Update 12/23/15: I've been watching the TV adaptation of this on Syfy and after seeing the first three episodes I am really liking it. I'm finding the TV show more compelling than I found the book.

Update 2/6/16: After finishing the first season of the TV adaptation, this story has just continued to grow on me. I was so pleasantly surprised by the first season of this. It's easily one of the best TV shows on Syfy in a very long time, just leaps and bounds above the other space opera shows they've offered in recent history. It's an odd thing when I think a TV show is better than the book it was based on, but that is the case here. I do feel like I was probably too hard on this book in my initial review, maybe because it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I am seeing it through different eyes now. The show has taken these characters that I wasn't all that crazy about and added more depth to them and this in turn has renewed my interest in reading the rest of the books in the series, especially since I've heard the characters deepen and become better in subsequent books.



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November 2017 book Club: Locker Nine

Locker Nine by Franklin Horton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Post-Apocolyptic
Content: Strong Language, Some rather brutal killings


Grace Hardwick’s dad is a science fiction writer who makes his living destroying the world. When Grace decides to go away for her first year of college her dad can’t help but think of all of the potential ways that society could collapse and strand his daughter hundreds of miles from home. Then it happens. Robert reminds his daughter of the key he gave her when she left for school. She doesn’t know what it opens. She doesn’t know where the engraved numbers will lead her. All she knows is that her dad is not the type to let her go hundreds of miles from home with no backup plan.

If I could sum up Locker Nine in one sentence it would be: This is every worst case scenario a prepper prepares for.

Honestly it's one thing to be prepared, but this dad borders on paranoid. No one should have to grow up thinking of all the bad things that could happen to them and carry around everything it would take to save them, but that's Grace in this book. From the key she never takes off her neck to the ginormous truck she drives, complete with armored bumper, Grace is prepared for anything and suspicious of everyone, thanks to dad. I personally couldn't stand to live that way. But of course in this story Grace is right to be suspicious every time. I personally don't think society would deteriorate as quickly as it does in this book. I mean there are thieves and murders lurking around every corner the very next day.

In the beginning of the book there is a coordinated terrorist attack that leaves much of the US without electricity and other important resources. I thought the book would continue on with the point of view of the terrorists, but as soon as the attack happens we never see them again. It was all just the set up for Grace to begin her journey across the US to get home, and an excuse for her to use every single resource her dad has given her, even the armored bumper on the big truck.

Grace is accompanied by her lifelong friend and college roommate, who is the complete opposite of Grace and inexplicably is surprised by some of the things Grace says and does, even though they have been friends since they were 6 years old. One thing that really irked me about this book was the fact that the best friend is portrayed as a rather weak character, but she is also the only character that shows any real emotion in the book. Grace is quite a Mary Sue, as she is good at everything, and shows next to no emotion, even after having to kill someone. There is one time she shows emotion near the end when someone dies, but other than that it's like she's on auto pilot.

There are also chapters from another character's point of view that I disliked a lot, and in the end I felt like his character and several others were just pointless to the plot. I think it would have made more sense if the book had focused on the terrorists and Grace trying to get home and left this other person out. But what really annoyed me the most about this book was that in the end after all that preparation and Mary Sue-ing on Grace's part, someone has to step in and save her because of her one emotional moment.

I also have to add in here that there is a part in the book where someone who has just been pretty much burned to a crisp gets up and walks for miles and does all kinds of other things in this condition, and that shouldn't be possible. Eventually this person knocks at a door and the person who answers the door just opens the door to them without even doing a double take at their appearance. It's like it completely goes unnoticed. I'm pretty sure if someone that looked like that knocked on my door I would hesitate to let them in, or at least want to know what happened to them.

This book was not what my fellow book club members and I thought it was going to be. I think I can definitely say this book was not for me, but if you like post-apocalyptic stories that include a lot of preppers and all that encompasses you might like it.

The Breathless by Tara Goedjen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Gothic, Suspense
Content: Some mild cursing


No one knows what really happened on the beach where Roxanne Cole’s body was found, but her boyfriend, Cage, took off that night and hasn’t been seen since. Until now. One year—almost to the day—from Ro’s death, when he knocks on the door of Blue Gate Manor and asks where she is.

The Breathless is a slow paced Southern Gothic that felt a bit disjointed at times. In the beginning I was confused by all the jumping from different points of view which included flashbacks into the past. Once I got used to it, it wasn't so bad, but I think the book could have been structured better.

Once I got into this book it kept me turning the pages. There were things I liked about it; the atmosphere of the book, the crumbling mansion, the woods, the creepy secret passages, and Mae-I really liked her a lot. Those were the elements that kept me reading. Like all Gothics, there was little bit of creepiness present, but unfortunately the book never reached the level of creepiness or suspense I was hoping for.

The books biggest failing for me were the unanswered questions, especially about Cage. I liked him, but felt the author dropped the ball with his character because of those unanswered questions. I'm sure they were intended to make the reader wonder about things for a while after the end of the book, but they annoyed me. Some of those questions needed to be answered for the story to make more sense. And speaking of the end, I can't say that I liked it. I was hoping for a different outcome. Mostly it wasn't a bad read, but it wasn't great either.

Thanks to Blogging for Books for sending me a copy of this book for review. More Info



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Good Tidings by Terri Reid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery
Content: Clean



Black Friday – the official opening of the holiday shopping season – and Patrice Marcum is stuck in the middle of her local superstore with a crying infant, a near-hysterical desire to just abandon the diapers and milk she desperately needs, and the snowstorm of the century dumping half a foot of snow on the parking lot outside. She needs a miracle.

In Good Tidings, Mary is visited by the ghost of a 6 year old boy who wants her to help him find his kidnapped baby brother. Just like the last book, there is the main mystery, and we get another side mystery. To be honest, neither of these are really mysteries. The bad guys are pretty much just laid out for us, and we are left figuring out the why behind it. There is some suspense while this goes on, but anyone going into this series thinking they are going to read a challenging mystery with lots of twists and turns, will be sorely disappointed. The real mystery so far, of both of these books, is the one surrounding Bradley's missing wife. We still don't know exactly what happened to her.

Mostly I did not like this book as much as I liked the first one. This one lacked some of the charm the other book had and wasn't as funny. Mainly because they leave the small town and spend most the book in Chicago. There is also a loose end left in this book that seemed kind of pointless to the plot, but maybe that will be continued at a future point in the series.

I still have the same complaints about this book that I had about the last one about Mary not being believable enough as an ex-cop, and doing things that don't seem consistent with the way an ex-cop would think or act. Why does she even have a gun? I have no idea, she never uses it. And her overprotective brothers really got on my nerves in this one. I do like that Bradley can see and hear the ghosts when he is touching Mary, and the added discovery that he seems to neutralize them when he is near her, made it more interesting, but it kind of felt like the author added that for convenience to the story. It would be interesting to explore the relationship Mary and Bradley have concerning the ghosts and why they affect each other the way they do around them.

I can see how this series could get old fast if the author doesn't step up the mystery aspect of it, or add some new element to it. It could end up being very repetitive. I'll stick it out for at least one more book though, or until we find out what happened to Bradley's wife.

Loose Ends by Terri Reid
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery
Content: Clean



Dying is what changed Mary O’Reilly’s life.

Loose Ends is a light mystery read. I thought it was both charming and humorous. Mary O'Reilly was a Chicago police officer who was shot in the line of duty. She died but was resuscitated. Since that day she has been able to see the ghosts of people who have not crossed over. She decides to quit the police force and opens up a paranormal detective agency after moving to a small town.

For the most part I liked this. I would give it 4 stars for the charm and humor, and the characters. I really enjoyed her banter with the two other business owners that befriend her. I liked the potential love interest and the way they met. I also really liked that there wasn't just one mystery introduced in this book, but three. One of which I'm going to guess will not be as easily solved as the other two were in this book. It will probably span at least a couple of books before it's resolved.

The things that I found to be shortcomings in this book, and what kept me from giving it 4 stars were first, the main mystery. It was pretty obvious who did it and I was hoping it would end up being a red herring, but at one point in the middle of the book the author for some reason decides to just let us in on it completely. If I hadn't found the rest of the book so likable I would not have been able to overlook this as easily. The second thing that sort of bothered me was that Mary did a couple of things that I thought a former cop wouldn't have done.

I will continue reading this series because I liked it despite those issues. It's a self published series so I wasn't expecting perfection, and the books are short; this one was only around a 6 hour read. Sometimes that's what I need, a quick, light read that doesn't take itself too seriously and this fit the bill.

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Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale
Content: A rather intense rape scene



Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac.

But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift.

Daughter of the Forest has been on my to-read list for ages. I kept putting off reading it for one reason or another, so when the Fantasy Buddy Reads group on Goodreads decided to buddy read it, I joined in on the read. I love Juliet Marillier's writing so much. I know probably I say that every time I read a book written by her, but she is truly one of my favorite fantasy authors. That being said, this book was not an easy read. It's heartbreakingly grim at times and at one point I put it down for something lighter. I honestly considered not continuing on for a minute there, but knew I would regret that. There is always a huge pay-off in the end for readers of Marillier's books. Ultimately this is a beautiful story about love and sacrifice. One of the most beautiful I've read.

“For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”

I fell in love with the characters in this book, in particular Sorcha, who had to be so strong for the ones she loved, and Red, who treated her with such love and care, even when he didn't understand the reasons behind the things she was doing. And then when he did come to understand a bit of why she was doing what she was doing when no one else could see it, I loved him even more.

"Each of you was put through many trials; each of you proved strong, strong enough for their purpose. So strong, indeed, that you came close to thwarting them, for each of you chose to give up what was loved best, in the hope that the other would find happiness."

Then there were Sorcha's brothers. Finbar holds a special place in my heart above the others with Conor a close second. There were times when her brothers were very inconsiderate of what Sorcha might want, and there was a point when I thought they did not deserve the sacrifices that she had made for them, but most of them redeemed themselves in my eyes by the end of the story.

“The end of the story is of your making, nobody else's. You can do with it as you choose. There are as many paths open to your hero as branches on a great tree. They are wonderful and terrible, and plain and twisted. They touch and part and intermingle, and you can follow them whatever way you will.”

I recommend this book if you like fairy tale retellings, historical fantasy, or enjoy Marillier's other books. This one is based on The Swan Princes (princes not princess). There are companion books that span more than one generation, and I'm looking forward to eventually reading them.



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The View from Rainshadow Bay by Colleen Coble

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Christian
Genre: Mystery, Romance
Content: Clean


The View From Rainshadow Bay is a mystery with some romance thrown in. There are Christian undertones to it as well. I had some issues with the consistency of the characters, the story, and some things that seemed pretty far-fetched.

As for the characters, I felt like the killer was not consistent. The killer goes from gleefully killing certain people to not wanting to kill others, and uses a different method for every single killing. Also one of the staged accidents would have been near impossible to stage. How would the killer have known exactly where they would be or exactly when to lie in wait?

There are other things like one person tying three men up while holding them at gunpoint with a rifle. There is no way one person could do that and still keep the rifle on the men. The three men could have overpowered that person and gotten away pretty easily.

As for the inconsistencies in the story, one example would be this: there is a package that has something in it that the killer wants, but the killer did not know the sheriff had the items that were in the package, so the killer goes after two different people in the book believed to have those items. But later on suddenly the killer knows the sheriff has these items, but gave one of them back to the main character? That doesn't make sense. Things like this just really annoyed me about this book. And don't get me started on guns being able to shoot off locks and silencers making guns completely noiseless, which is also included in the book. There were just too many inconsistencies and implausibilities in this book for me to completely enjoy it.

This is the second Colleen Coble book I've read. The other was Haven of Swans. I liked it better than this one, and I did not catch the same types of inconsistencies and implausibilities in that one. Other than those issues, so far I feel like her books are a little slow and just not compelling enough for me, especially for a series. Plus this one was very predictable and it was very easy to figure out who the killer was. This is the first book in a series, but I don't see a need for this to be a series, since everything is wrapped up in the end, and it works fine as a stand-alone, so I'm going to leave it at that.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher Thomas Nelson for giving me a copy of this book for review.


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Renegades by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Clean

 
Secret Identities. Extraordinary Powers. She wants vengeance. He wants justice.

I was delighted to be gifted an advance copy of Renegades by the publisher through Netgalley. I'm a huge fan of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series, so I had been looking forward to reading this book since I first heard about it, and Renegades was not a disappointment. I loved this book! I especially liked the themes of self-reliance and personal liberty that are sprinkled throughout the book from the point of view of Nova. Sure she is one if the villains, but it isn't exactly that simple. There's good and bad on both sides. I also really liked the discussions of what makes a hero, and how anyone can be one, because super powers do not make a person a hero, what's in one's heart and what one decides to do makes a person a hero.

This was similar to Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson, so if you liked that series you will probably like this one. I personally liked this book more. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.



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