Showing posts with label Erica O'Rourke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Erica O'Rourke. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

July's Minis: Molly O'Keefe, Ericka O'Rourke, Marie Force, Garrett Leigh

As promised, I'm continuing my summer reading updates today by featuring four books I read during the month of July. As you will see below the categories are different and so are my reactions to each one.

I have read quite a few westerns this year within all different categories, and chose to read Seduced by Molly O'Keefe after Wendy brought it to my attention by posting a review at her site (see a link to her review, as well as to Dear Author's at the bottom of my mini). Dissonance by Ericka O'Rourke (new-to-me author) is one of the books I had on my summer wish list,  and both I Want to Hold Your Hand by Marie Force and Only Love by Garrett Leigh (new-to-me author) are books that I chose to read because the book summaries caught my eye.
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Seduced (Into the Wild #1) by Molly O'Keefe: B+

I've read Molly O'Keefe's contemporary romances but that did not prepare me for her post-civil war historical western romance Seduced. It is not at all what I expected, it is much better. Our main characters are Southern Belle Melody Hurst and ex-soldier turned bounty hunter Cole Baywood. Melody's husband Jimmy, sister Annie, and Cole's brother Steven serve as the secondary characters in a self-contained, closed setting that keeps the high tension-fueled atmosphere going even after violence erupts and dissipates.

Melody has been to hell and back and after Jimmy is gone, she has nothing left to give of herself. Melody was a manipulative southern beauty before the war and will do whatever is necessary to secure a future for herself and her sister Annie to keep them safe. Seducing Cole is her answer. Cole can't see beyond the horror of war and everything he lost -- his family and innocence, his true self. All he sees is blood in his hands. Melanie's beauty and company remind him of who he used to be, but Cole will not settle with a woman who can't give him everything.

Gritty, that's the word that comes to mind when I think of Seduced. Melody may have been a Southern Belle in her past, but she's no wilting flower and Cole is passionate and tender but tough and not easily manipulated. The violent scenes at the beginning of this romance are not gratuitous and instead serve to anchor this romance to the historical time. The secondary characters are also explored and contribute much to the story adding to the central conflict of civil war torn lives and the developing relationship between Melody and Cole. This is a gritty, redemptive historical romance with depth of character and feeling, a big scoop of hope, and the beginning of love for our romantic couple at the end. I can't wait to read the second book in this series. (Historical Romance/Western, 2014)

Other reviews for Seduced:
The Misadventures of Super Librarian by Wendy: B+
Dear Author by Jane: B-

Dissonance (Dissonance #1) by Erica O'Rourke: C+

This YA science fiction/fantasy novel is set in a great multiverse world where music and musical notes are incorporated as a basis for travel between parallel universes. The first book of Ericka O'Rourke's Dissonance series is also heavy on the romance. Expect a few sections with info dump here and there and predictable characterization such as the rebellious, reckless teenager with major authority issues, the love triangle, and the absent, unlikable parents. The characters, with few exceptions, are not immediately likable.

As with other YA romances I have read in the past, I wondered when and why the love happens. There is a disconnect between the sudden crush that turns into a sort of immediate obsession coming from the sixteen-year-old female protagonist, the young male protagonist's lack of awareness of her, and the relationship that develops whereby she is willing to sacrifice it all -- including family, friendships, and world -- for him, while he is willing to sacrifice all for his mother. It comes off desperate and off-balanced to say the least. I don't know how young adults will feel about the romance aspect of this book, but that's how it struck me personally.

Regardless, the premise for the world-building and the overall mystery are both very good, and for those reasons Dissonance was worth a read for me. The story ends satisfactorily, if with a bit of a cliffhanger, ready for book two of the series. (YA/Fantasy, 2014)

I Want to Hold Your Hand by Marie Force: Grade C-

Great premise, but an oddly executed romance where the female protagonist's dead husband gets almost more page time than the hero of the piece. Whatever it is that Hannah feels for Nolan -- lust, attraction, admiration -- her life, her thoughts, even her new relationship, revolve around her "husband" Caleb. And she and everyone else, including Nolan, think of Hannah as "Caleb's wife." She cares more about what her dead husband's family think about her new relationship than her feelings for Nolan or Nolan's feelings for her -- a man who loves her deeply and passionately and waited for her for five years. This is a frustrating read where even at the end I was not convinced that after 7 years of grieving Hannah was ready for a new man in her life.

I believe that Marie Force wrote a good book about the process that widows of soldiers go through when they lose a beloved husband. I also believe that if the timeline for Hannah's and Nolan's romance had been longer, if they had gone through what they experience in this novel and came together later when Hannah was really ready, this romance would have worked beautifully. But as it is, I did not buy it. Nolan, as the new man in Hannah's life has to be more than a saint to accept the fact that he will always be second best -- and that's the way this strikes me. He will always be second best.

Force does a great job with the sexual tension and build-up to intimacy between Nolan and Hannah and I enjoyed that aspect of the story for the most part, until the couple makes it to the bedroom which was a big disappointment. A great addition, the Abbott family and townspeople helped me get through this odd romance. (Contemporary Romance, 2014) 

Recommended book with similar storyline that really works: Joe's Wife by Cheryl St. John

Only Love by Garrett Leigh: Grade B

This is a double hurt/comfort book with tons of angst. A war veteran suffering from an incurable decease and PTSD comes home and moves in with his sister-in-law's brother, a man who suffers from severe epilepsy and is monitored by his trained dog. The two men find solace in each other, with the dog becoming a bonus both to the relationship and the story. This is a well written, multiple tissue read with some surprisingly deep issues and a slew of emotionally draining moments. Only Love is my first book by Garrett Leigh, but it won't be my last. (LGBT/MM Romance, 2014) 

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I will return with more updates. Yes, I read more! My summer reading is going well so far and I haven't even picked up my August 'must reads' yet. :)

Later!

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Saturday, July 5, 2014

Summer Wish List: SFF/ UF / Contemporary Fiction

There are so many books I would love to read this summer! Some I've already pre-ordered, others are already in my possession, but I always keep a list of books in my "wish list." Of those, I usually end up reading at least half throughout any given year. From that list, I've chosen the ten SF/F, UF, and contemporary fiction books that I'm most likely to read from the July and August 2014 releases.

JULY 8, 2014

Landline by Rainbow Rowell (Fiction/SFF, St. Martin’s Press)
Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her. Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. Georgie doesn’t expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally ruined everything. Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, exactly. She feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. Is that what she’s supposed to do? Would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

JULY 10, 2014

Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel by Tiphanie Yanique (Fantasy, Riverhead)
In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.

Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, this is a novel of love and magic set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. The story is told in a language and rhythm that evoke an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch (SF/Mystery, Putnam Adult)
A decade has passed since the city of Pittsburgh was reduced to ash. Survivor John Dominic Blaxton remains obsessed with the past. Grieving for his wife and unborn child who perished in the blast, Dominic relives his lost life by immersing in the Archive, a fully interactive digital reconstruction of Pittsburgh. Dominic investigates deaths recorded in the Archive to help close cases long since grown cold.When he discovers glitches in the code surrounding a crime scene, the body of a beautiful woman abandoned in a muddy park that he’s convinced someone tried to delete from the Archive, his cycle of grief is shattered. Dominic tracks the murder through a web of deceit that takes him from the darkest corners of the Archive to the ruins of the city itself, leading him into the heart of a nightmare more horrific than anything he could have imagined.

JULY 15, 2014

World of Trouble: The Last Policeman III by Ben H Winters (SF/Mystery, Quirk Books)

Critically acclaimed author Ben H. Winters delivers this explosive final installment in the Edgar Award winning Last Policeman series.

With the doomsday asteroid looming, Detective Hank Palace has found sanctuary in the woods of New England, secure in a well-stocked safe house with other onetime members of the Concord police force. But with time ticking away before the asteroid makes landfall, Hank’s safety is only relative, and his only relative—his sister Nico—isn’t safe.

Soon, it’s clear that there’s more than one earth-shattering revelation on the horizon, and it’s up to Hank to solve the puzzle before time runs out . . . for everyone.

JULY 22, 2014

Dissonance (Dissonance #1) by Erica O’Rourke (SF/F/Romantic Thriller, Simon & Schuster)
Delancy Sullivan has always known there’s more to reality than what people see. Every time someone makes a choice, a new, parallel world branches off from the existing one. As a Walker, someone who can navigate between these worlds, Del’s job is to keep all of the dimensions in harmony. Del can hear the dissonant frequency that each world emits as clear as a bell. When a training session in an off-key world goes horribly wrong, she is forbidden from Walking by the Council. She secretly starts to investigate these other worlds. Something strange is connecting them and it’s not just her random encounters with echo versions of the guy she likes, Simon Lane.

As she begins to fall for the Echo Simons in each world, she draws closer to a truth that the Council of Walkers is trying to hide, a secret that threatens the fate of the entire multiverse.

JULY 29, 2014

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom (Literary Fiction, Random House)
“My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”

So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.
The Buried Life by Carrie Patel (SF/F/Murder Mystery, Angry Robots)

The gaslight and shadows of the underground city of Recoletta hide secrets and lies.

When Inspector Liesl Malone investigates the murder of a renowned historian, she finds herself stonewalled by the all-powerful Directorate of Preservation – Recoletta’s top-secret historical research facility.

When a second high-profile murder threatens the very fabric of city society, Malone and her rookie partner Rafe Sundar must tread carefully, lest they fall victim to not only the criminals they seek, but the government which purports to protect them. Knowledge is power, and power must be preserved at all costs…

Jack Strong: A Story of Life after Life by Walter Mosley (SF/F - Open Road Media)
In a Las Vegas hotel room, a man awakes to confront his destiny

Dreaming, Jack hears voices: a frightened child in a hospital, a woman cheating on her husband, a death-row inmate. When he wakes, the voices recede, but they do not vanish. He is in a luxurious hotel room on the Vegas strip, and his body is covered in scars. Jack Strong is a patchwork man, his flesh melded together from dozens of men and women, and his mind is the same way. Countless lifetimes are contained within him: people whose time was cut short, and who see their place in Jack as a chance to make things right.

On behalf of one of them, Jack reignites a feud with corrupt casino bosses. Drawing on the skills of another, he beats the life out of two bodyguards. Jack fights for control as he lurches from impulse to impulse, certain that somewhere within him exists a soul. The answers may lie with whomever is tailing him in a sleek black car—if Jack can somehow confront him.

AUGUST 5, 2014

Downfall: A Cal Leandros Novel by Rob Thurman (Urban Fantasy, Roc)
I let it go—all of it. Everything I’d been saving up all my life, building and growing inside me, too much to hold in one half-human body. It pushed and fought to be free with a force that turned me into a bomb with a timer vibrating on zero. I was free.

But so was everything I’d fought so hard not to be....

Brothers Cal and Niko Leandros know trouble when they see it—and then proceed to wipe the floor with it. But now it seems their whole world is falling to pieces. Cal’s nightmarish monster side is growing ever stronger, changing Cal physically as well as mentally. Which is exactly what Grimm—Cal’s savage doppelgänger—wants. And when a covert supernatural organization decides that it’s time to put Cal down before he threatens pretty much everything else in existence, the brothers find themselves in a fight they actually might lose. But the dark temptations Cal has denied all his life may prove to be exactly what can save them.

Even if he must fall forever…
AUGUST 12, 2014

The House We Grew Up In: A Novel by Lisa Jewell (Contemporary Fiction, Atria Books)
“Clever, intelligent…wonderful” (Jojo Moyes, New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You).

Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and tow-headed twins Rory and Rhys all attend the village school and eat home-cooked meals together every night. Their father is a sweet gangly man named Colin, who still looks like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish, round-framed glasses. Their mother is a beautiful hippy named Lorelei, who exists entirely in the moment. And she makes every moment sparkle in her children’s lives.

Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they’ve never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in—and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family’s desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.