Lakesedge (World at the Lake's Edge, #1) by Lyndall Clipstone

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong language, Self harm, Child abuse, Attempted suicide, Some intimate parts that include a lot of kissing and touching, Masturbation is alluded to.

 

There are monsters in the world.

When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumors about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.

There are monsters in the woods.

As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn…

There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.

Now, to save Rowan—and herself—Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unraveling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under. 

 

Reading this book reminded me of one of the reasons I don't read very much YA anymore. Everything is so overly romanticized. And since this is a gothic fantasy, I expected that to an extent, but not to this extent. There is so much mud and lake water in this book, that I should have wanted to shower after reading it. I mean, mud stinks. Lake water stinks. People who have practically been wallowing in both, stink! A person who is literally full of it and spewing it out would stink. There is no way anyone would want to kiss that. But the characters in this book never seem to notice the stench. The most we get is "He smells of blood and leaves, and the lake" or something like that. And of course she wants to kiss him. Violetta wears the same mud covered dress all day and into the next day without thinking of changing it. She does this more than once. Who does that? And of course he still wants to get romantic with her.

Overall, this was an odd book. It was dark and strange and not really what I was expecting, but that gorgeous cover drew me in. There were both inconsistencies and too much repetition in the story, and at times the author would state a word three times instead of just once, like this, "It was cold, cold, cold." It doesn't make it any colder if it's said three times. One "cold" would have gotten the point across. Although I didn't completely dislike Violeta, she could be annoying and not very bright at times. She never thought anything through as much as she should have. There were things about the book I did like. I liked the gothic fantasy setting, the tortured love interest (although the romance came on too instant and didn't have the enemy-to-lovers build up I wanted), and the supporting characters, even though they were not very well fleshed out.

The end of this book dragged on for too long, and once I finally got to the very end it was very unsatisfying, and I would have preferred everything to be wrapped up in this one book, because sadly, I don't think I care enough to see what happens in the next one.

The Ranch (The Birch Creek Ranch, #3) by B.E. Baker

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Women's Fiction, Romance
Content: Clean

A ranch they didn't expect to love. A family they didn't expect to find.

Amanda and Abigail Brooks didn’t even want a ranch. They should be pleased the secondary beneficiary is trying to take it away. But now they’ve been in Birch Creek for a while and they’ve started to put down roots. They won’t give up without a fight—even if the odds of winning are bleak.

Donna Ellingson started on the wrong side of things, but she’s eager to rectify past mistakes. But when helping one widow harms the other, none of the choices she’s presented with are clear.

Can the women save the ranch that has brought them all together, and learn to love openly and boldly, even when life keeps getting in the way?

 

I was eagerly awaiting the release of The Ranch and was pleased when the author actually released it early! This is the third book in the The Birch Creek Ranch Series and I enjoyed reading it just as much as the others. There was good character growth, but it did seem like Abigail and Amanda went backwards for a little while, reverting to their old selves when things got tough. I think that can be very realistic though. Sometimes we fall back on old habits when things get hard. I love both of these characters but Abigail could get on my nerves sometimes with her always good at everything and take control of everything personality type, but I was able to see beneath all that. 

On the other hand, Amanda could get on my nerves because she couldn't seem to take control of her own life. Both ladies needed to work on their communication skills. There were a lot of assumptions simply because they didn't talk to either each other, or the men they loved. Sometimes this can be an annoying trope in romance stories, but it was done in a way here that felt less annoying, and it was helped by the fact that I think they learned they needed to communicate more.

I liked that Donna is now a permanent part of things and we get chapters from her perspective again. Donna grew on me a lot, and I have a lot of respect for her. I can see romance looming in her future and I can't wait for it to happen; hopefully in the next book! She deserves someone who will truly love and respect her. It was hard reading the way the people in her life, that were supposed to love her, treated her, but when she stuck it to her sister-in-law before she went to the motel, that put a smile of my face!

Mostly, what I love about this series are the characters and how real they feel. I like that I could identify with certain things about these ladies. If there is anything about the book that I felt was maybe a little unrealistic, it would be that some things felt like they were wrapped up too neatly, but I do love when good people prevail and bad ones lose, so how can I really complain? I'm excited to see what is in store for these characters in the next book, Amanda especially, since she is more at loose ends right now.

Thanks to the author for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Windigo Island (Cork O'Connor, #14) by William Kent Krueger

 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Strong language, Sex trafficking of young girls

 

When the body of a teenage Ojibwe girl washes up on the shore of an island in Lake Superior, the residents of the nearby Bad Bluff reservation whisper that it was the work of a deadly mythical beast, the Windigo, or a vengeful spirit called Michi Peshu. Such stories have been told by the Ojibwe people for generations, but they don’t explain how the girl and her friend, Mariah Arceneaux, disappeared a year ago. At the request of the Arceneaux family, private investigator Cork O’Connor takes on the case.

But on the Bad Bluff reservation, nobody’s talking. Still, Cork puts enough information together to find a possible trail. He learns that the old port city of Duluth is a modern-day center for sex trafficking of vulnerable women, many of whom are young Native Americans. As the investigation deepens, so does the danger.

Yet Cork holds tight to his higher purpose—his vow to find Mariah, an innocent fifteen-year-old girl whose family is desperate to get her back. With only the barest hope of saving her from men whose darkness rivals that of the legendary Windigo, Cork prepares for an epic battle that will determine whether it will be fear, or love, that truly conquers all. 

 

I haven't really bothered to write many reviews for the books in this series because I just didn't want to spend time on reviews for books that I find pretty mediocre.  I enjoyed the first few books in this series and rated them 3.5 and 4 stars, but at some point, the series took a downhill turn and has never gotten back to where it was for me. Mostly I rate these 3 stars now for a few reasons, with this one being the first I've rated only 2. One reason is, with the exception of Henry, that I do not like the characters a whole lot. I find them annoying at times and unrealistic. Cork is a contradiction when it comes to being an ex-police officer/detective and his views on certain things. They don't make sense and don't jive with his actions. His wife in the first half of the series was never a very likable character to me. His kids can also be annoying. Jenny in particular is insufferable at times, especially in this book, where she repeatedly inserts herself where she doesn't need to be, and then in the end is traumatized by her own actions, which left me with little sympathy for her. All she needs to do is remember who that person was and everything they did and she should be just fine, but knowing this series it will take way too long for this to happen.

Another reason these books no longer rate very high for me is that the mysteries are never hard to figure out, in fact, sometimes there is little to no mystery to solve. It's always the obvious solution, and the characters come off as a little dumb for not knowing. And then there is the fact that the books have begun to feel like they are the author's soapbox. Now, I don't necessarily think that authors believe everything their characters believe, or that just because they write something in a book that they have an agenda, but at some point, I became aware that every single bad person in these books seemed to have the same political views. Now, I don't care what the political views are one way or another, but the way this is being done annoys me because it isn't realistic. There are good and bad people in every group, in every walk of life, and these books would be much more realistic if they showed that instead of pointing the finger at only one of them. If we could just have good mysteries instead of agendas, it would be great.

Then, yet another thing about this series that annoys me at times is the author's writing style. He sometimes describes things in too many words, or I guess you could say, in too flowery of a way. Near the end of this book there was a paragraph like this that really stood out to me. I won't quote it since I would have to go back and find it on the audio, but he talks about one of the sex traffickers going to prison and only having the ceiling of his cell to stare at instead of the sky. It was said in a really flowery way, when it could have been said in a much more simple way. There was no need to go all poetic about it.

Also, I'm going to interject here that at some point people must take responsibility for themselves, instead of blaming other people for the ills in their lives. I almost decided to quit this series after this book, and I still might, but I only have a few of them left, so I may read those just to finish out the books that are already written.