Book Review - Tidal - Amanda Hocking

Title:  Tidal

Author: Amanda Hocking

Review:  This is the 3^rd book in the Water Song Series by Amanda Hocking.  I read the last two and this was a good one to keep the series going.  I am looking forward to the last book to see how it all ends up and if Gemma gets out of her curse. 

The ending of this book made me wish I could pick up the next one right away.  I hate waiting for books to be released and so I have already ordered the last one and wait for its release and the mailman with a box from Amazon.   

I got the first book at a book signing, I enjoyed reading Amanda’s Tryll series and I hope this one is as good….one book to go and I really, really want to read it now!!!  I don’t want to give too much away, but Harper is still trying to help Gemma get her life back.  The only way that Gemma can think to help herself is to kill the sirens and that means finding the original curse so she can find a way to break it.  This book gives you more history of the sirens and how they have lived for as long as they have.  Daniel also has issues with Lexi as he has special abilities that she wants to know more about….lots more about…mummm!

If you are reading this series do not miss this one…..only a bit to go before the next one is out…it is out already, but I will post the review soon….I have high expectations for this book.

Published: Published June 4th 2013 by St. Martin's Griffin

ISBN: 9781250008114

Copyright: 2013

Pages: 342

Quick Review: 31/2 stars (out of 5)

Where I Obtained the Book:  Purchased at Amazon

Synopsis:  The magical world of Watersong is about to change forever. The answers Gemma and her friends have been searching for are finally revealed - but evil is closing in and time is running out....

Gemma and Harper Fisher are facing the fight of their lives. Gemma has been cursed with extraordinary powers that have a terrifying dark side, but she's finally found what she needs - a way to break the curse and become human again. However, finding the means to do it will be her greatest challenge yet. And now Penn, Lexi, and Thea - the gorgeous but deadly creatures who cursed her - are determined to kill her before she has a chance. Making matters worse, Penn has her sights set on Daniel - the guy Harper loves - and Penn always gets what she wants.

As Gemma and Harper race to break the curse before it's too late, they're thrust deeper into a mythical world of immortal secrets. They must into their enemies' past to find the answers they need, even if it means being drawn deeper into their savagely beautiful world. But one of the girls is not what she seems...and Gemma finds an unlikely ally as she struggles to save herself. Will it be enough to break an ancient curse that no one has ever escaped from alive?

Authors Information:  I live in Minnesota, and I write young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy mostly. The My Blood Approves series is about vampires in Minneapolis, and its available now. I also wrote the Trylle Trilogy, which is a paranormal romance without vampires, shifters, mermaids, fae, angels, dragons, ghosts, or ninjas.

My latest book is Hollowland - a zombie urban fantasy set in the dystopian near future. It's a bit more violent and gritter than my other books, but there is still romance. Mostly though, Remy kicks a lot of butt.

I also enjoy Red Bull, Jim Henson, Batman, Jane Austen, Star Wars legos, and I absolutely hate long walks on the beach out of my intense fear/hatred of wet sand

My favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Alan Moore, and J. D. Salinger, but I don't write anything like them. I have an obsession with River Phoenix, and I've seen Silence of the Lambs more than any other movie, even The Dark Knight. If I were trapped on a deserted island, the one thing I'd take with me would be a boat capable for taking me home.

I'm also the guitarist in a band called the Fraggin Aardvarks, and even though its even twice as cool as it sounds, we haven't had a practice in like two years, so I'm not sure that technically we are still a band. But we never broke up, and it's an awesome thing to tell people, so I'm sticking with it. (We even had a synethesizer!)

Here are some ways you can talk to me:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/amanda_hocking

Facebook: www.facebook.com/amandahockingfans

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/amanda_hocking 

Email: hocking_amanda@hotmail.com

Other Reviews:

Joey Books

Miss Literati

I heart Reading

Monday in my mailbox

This has pile has been collecting and we are working towards reading this pile currently.
 Zane Presents.
On the outside, Aruba Dixon has a life other women envy: a beautiful home, her handsome husband, James, and a gorgeous son. Inside, Aruba knows the truth. When her husband quits his fifth job in seven months, she’s done. Aruba wants a better husband, and she has the perfect man in mind—her friend Victoria’s husband. Victoria Faulk is a head-turning stunner—and she tells herself so every day. Between shopping, assigning tasks to her nanny, and making sure her daughter doesn’t smudge the walls of her million-dollar home, Victoria can’t fathom having sex with her husband. But when he grows distant, Victoria backpedals to the good old days to regain his affection. Will it be too late?

Tawatha Gipson feels it’s high time she found a husband. So do her four children by four different men. Each time Tawatha thought she’d snagged a ring and a man, something goes wrong. When she spots James Dixon at the jobsite, she’s determined to have him by any means necessary.

As these women’s lives intersect and collide, they learn the grass is greener on the other side…but it isn’t always easy to hop the fence.

In this frightening novel about the future, a series of catastrophic events not only cripples the world’s economy, but also ushers in the return of slavery. Traci and Bill Bianco were living the all-American dream, until the world as they knew it came crashing down.

Years after a black man is elected President of the United States and the Empire State building is toppled by an explosion, the nation is in a state of upheaval. But it’s Hurricane Molly in 2018 and The Stock Market Crash of 2020 that seals the country’s fate. Once the economy takes a nosedive, ordinary Americans must resort to the barter system to get by.

Food and shelter are exchanged for labor and initially it seems as though it may work, until the unscrupulous begin to take power and laws are changed. Though Traci and Bill actually fare better than most, economically, they are confronted with a new risk—interracial marriage is once again deemed unlawful and anyone caught is subject to arrest. Soon Traci and their four-year-old daughter are on the run.

Strange Fruit offers a post-cataclysmic world when desperation reigns supreme and people resort to the cruelties of the past to take control.

Impressed by outward appearances, Lisa Hampton is quick to judge others based on their status and wealth—until her powerful friends try to ruin her happiness. Divorced, single-mother Lisa Hampton has been able to start a new life after a scandalous incident that forced her to relocate to Ohio. Thanks to her job she has the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the state. Lisa’s biggest issue nowadays is her rebellious teenage daughter, Chanelle.

Other than the stress of dealing with Chanelle, life couldn’t be any better for Lisa. She is best friends with Isaac and Olivia Scott, the most influential and powerful couple in the state. If she isn’t hanging with Olivia, Lisa is spending time with her new beau, Minister Eric Freeman. His prayers and words of encouragement have helped her weather the storms in her life. Lisa looks forward to the possibility of a future with Eric, though his expectations may be more than she can handle.

When Chanelle accuses the Scotts’ son of rape, Lisa discovers how quickly her friends become foes as Olivia and Isaac use their wealth, prestige, and power to manipulate justice. And just as things seem to be going smoothly for Lisa and Chanelle, Olivia makes one last destructive move that threatens everything they hold dear.

Baby drama and political scandal don’t mix in this sequel to Suzetta Perkins’ Behind the Veil.

Margo Myles is getting ready to give birth to twins, but she isn’t sure who the father is—her soon to be ex-husband, Jefferson Myles, or her one-time fling, Malik Mason. Malik is running for a state senate seat and no one is going to take the sweet smell of victory from him.

Ivy Myles, Margo and Jefferson’s eldest daughter, is moving back home. She’s been estranged from her parents, but a new love calls her back—and her love is none other than Malik Mason. Malik intends to make Ivy his wife, but will she be a distraction on his way to the senate?

Scandal and politics always seem to make perfect bedfellows. And Malik Mason must decide which woman he loves more, mother or daughter, or risk ruining everything.

This debut novel offers a no-holds-barred account of two young lovers fighting their pasts for the chance of love and family.

Love is the one thing missing from Fatima's life, beginning when her parents left her at the age of four. Usually she enjoys calling the shots in her love life,but when she runs into a mysterious man on a night out, everything changes. Cory Hines would give anything to undo his childhood. Growing up with an abusive father and distant mother left him wary of family and relationships. And as he tries to straighten out his life, the nightmares return and send him down a drunken spiral. His siblings force him into therapy, but its not until he meets Fatima that he begins to learn what commitment is all about. Though their pasts continue to haunt their relationships, it is their common problems that draw Cory and Fatima closer. In the process of getting their lives on track,they find out more about themselves and their pasts than they bargained for and realize they must rid their demons for good in order to survive. But just when Cory and Fatima get comfortable with each other and the idea of a relationship, news of an unexpected pregnancy sends them both running back to the familiar. Full of raw emotion and a vulnerability that pulls you in, Parallel Pasts offers an inside look at what it takes to escape a history of domestic abuse, as Cory must suppress the urge to fight anything that gets in his way, and the women who love him through the process.

Book Review - Book Tour - A Case of Doubtful Death (A Frances Doughty Mystery) - Linda Stratmann

A Case of  a Doubtful Death -    Linda Stratmann

A Victorian Love Affair.

I think that anyone who writes about a particular period in history needs to be a little bit in love with it. That doesn’t mean one would actually want to live there – just think about Victorian dentistry for a start – but it should exert a fascination. I am often asked ‘Do you have to do lots of research?’ as if that is a problem – but of course the research is sheer pleasure, as I am constantly discovering new things about a subject that enthralls me. 

It all started around 1998 when I began writing (as distinct from just reading) about Victorian crime. I always want to know why a crime has taken place, and I realised very quickly that if I was going to understand the crime I was going to have to learn about the Victorians, not just the basics of what they ate and wore, and how they travelled, but how they thought and spoke. Vitally, I needed to know not only what they said but also the hidden meanings beneath those words. I had to somehow delve below the layers of euphemisms, subtle allusions and the need for ‘delicacy’ and find out what they were really saying.

I have always believed that as people we have never really changed over history. That is one reason why the plays of Shakespeare still give us so much enjoyment, all human desire is there; love, hate, jealousy, ambition, we still recognise ourselves. But the expectations of Victorian society, especially for the respectable middle classes meant that much had to be hidden or repressed. Pomposity, hypocrisy and duplicity abound. It is that struggle between the fundamental instincts of human nature and how the Victorians were schooled to behave, a struggle that many failed to win, or only won at some cost, that interests me. The idea of scandal lurking behind the lace curtains still excites us.

The best way of understanding the Victorians is to read as much as possible of what they said, especially under conditions where they were obliged to speak openly, and thanks to the wonderful stenographers who reported inquests, trials, public meetings and parliamentary proceedings, examples of actual Victorian speech as it was spoken by every level of society is there in abundance.  I can lose myself in the rhythm of the spoken word which is so much more rounded and less jerky than nowadays, the satire and sarcasm, the little hints of impropriety, the circumlocutions, the evasions and the excuses they made for bad behaviour.

Their prejudices shock us now. Racism and sexism were accepted norms of thought, and it is uncomfortable, when reading works by writers we admire to find these casually expressed in their books and letters. I have just been reading a speech by a noted Professor, a good kind intelligent man, explaining why he thought women should not enter the medical profession. But he was merely a man of his time, trying to rationalize why things should stay as they were, and there were many like him, as well as others who were more enlightened and far-seeing.  

Victorians were often, by our standards, very naïve about the motivation to commit crime, and what constituted scientific proof, but these were fields that were in their infancy, slowly developing throughout the nineteenth century which was a glorious age of discovery. They naturally assumed, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that in any crime where there was collusion, a female was directed by a male, a younger person by an elder and a servant by the master.

They were adventurous and reckless, narrow-minded and unthinkingly cruel, yet it was easy to arouse a spirit of kindhearted chivalry, a determination to be useful to society and charity to the less fortunate.  More than any preceding age they looked forward, and saw the achievements of society in terms of progress, of what could be done to make life better. They built machines to do the work of men, they looked for cures for disease, and they rationalized the law. Not all their ideas worked, but you can’t fault them for trying.

Linda Stratmann 2013

Book Review - Mr. Darcy's Letters Pride and Prejudice Variation - Abigail Reynolds

Title:  Mr. Darcy's Letter: A Pride & Prejudice Variation (Pemberley Variation Series)

Author: Abigail Reynolds

Review:  I love Jane Austen and have read every book she had written many times over.  This had lots of the same dialogue as the original book, but a few modifications.  I liked the way things changed in the book and saw the changes as adding a different dimension to the love story.

I was a bit shocked at the sex that came out of nowhere and it was quite the steamy little bammmmm!!!  The rest of the book was what I expected from Pride and Prejudice.  The way that everything came to the same ending had to go around and around it several circles before getting there.  I did like the changes and enjoyed the story again.

This has made me want to look at other Jane Austen variations to see how they are the same or different.

Published: Published November 21st 2011 by Intertidal Press (first published 2011)

ISBN: 9780615571416

Copyright: 2011

Pages: 264

Quick Review: 4 stars (out of 5)

Where I Obtained the Book:  Purchased at Amazon for Kindle.

Synopsis:  A lady's reputation is a fragile thing. If anyone ever discovered that Miss Elizabeth Bennet had received a letter from a single gentleman, she could be ruined... or forced to marry a man she detests. In this "Pride & Prejudice" variation, Elizabeth takes the safer course and refuses to read Mr. Darcy's letter of explanation. Returning home unaware of Wickham's true nature, Elizabeth confesses everything to him, putting both Mr. Darcy and herself in grave danger from Wickham's schemes.

Authors Information:  Abigail Reynolds has spent the last fifty years asking herself what she wants to be when she grows up. This month she is a writer, a mother and a physician in a part-time private practice. Next month is anybody’s guess. Originally from upstate New York, she indecisively studied Russian, theater, and marine biology before deciding to attend medical school, a choice which allowed her to avoid any decisions at all for four years.

She began writing Pride & Prejudice variations in 2001 to spend more time with her very favorite characters. Encouragement from fellow Austen fans convinced her to continue asking ‘What if…?’, which led to seven other Pemberley Variations and two modern novels set on Cape Cod. Her most recent releases are WHAT WOULD MR. DARCY DO?, A PEMBERLEY MEDLEY, and MORNING LIGHT. She is currently at work on some book or other, and will let the world know if she ever figures out what it is. A lifetime member of JASNA, she lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two teenaged children, and a menagerie of pets.

Other Reviews:
AustenProse
So Little Time

Book Feature - Time Killer - Todd M Thiede

Stop Wasting My Time! Serial Killer Exacts Revenge On Dawdlers In Debut Crime Thriller, Time Killer

ELGIN, Ill. June 10, 2013 - The debut release of Time Killer sucks us into the beautifully tangled logic of an ordinary man turned killer. The gruesome message “Don’t Waste People’s Time”, written in his victim’s blood, taunts veteran Detective Max Larkin and his young partner, Jesse Fairlane, to stop him before the clock runs out for the town of Rockton, Illinois.

As they investigate the scene of the crime, the clues slowly begin to add up. Could this be the same deranged killer who struck ten years ago? Before they can answer that question, another murder is reported, and Max and Jesse suddenly realize they have a serial killer on the loose.

A fast-paced procedural thriller, fans of Criminal Minds and CSI will appreciate Time Killer's richly detailed characters and brutal action. It just may be a modern fable for today’s instant gratification driven society.

“Everybody's time is valuable, not just yours,” warns author Todd M. Thiede. “Be kind to those around you.”

Readers are weighing in on their biggest “Time Waster” pet peeve online. Don’t become a serial killer! Vent your frustration in a healthy way by sharing it with others at www.toddthiede.com. The deadline for entries is June 30^th.

Excerpt From Time Killer, p.1

“He tries to stay calm, but his mind and heart are racing. He slowly tries to raise each arm and finds that he is tied down to the bed with duct tape across his chest, torso and legs. With his arms pinned to his sides, all he can do is turn his head far enough to the left to see his wife, Gwen, is still there, but she is also taped to the bed.”

Recent Praise For Time Killer

“I couldn’t put this book down, and would thoroughly recommend it. The storyline is brilliant and there are some great twists.” - Susan Keefe, Goodreads review

“Read the whole book in 1 night. Tired, but couldn't put it down. Great reading.” - Dee, Amazon review

“A fast-paced thriller centered on a brutal, time-obsessed serial killer.” - Kirkus Reviews

About The Author

Todd Thiede grew up in Elgin, Illinois and together he and his wife are raising four children in his hometown. No stranger to high stakes thrills, he played poker professionally, on and offline, and participated in the World Series of Poker in 2010. Todd is also a finance manager in Elmhurst, Illinois.

Fans who want more of Detective Max Larkin will be pleased to hear that Todd is currently hard at work on the sequel, Lies to Die for.

Time Killer

Todd M. Thiede, author

Publisher: iUniverse

ISBN-10: 1475972350

ISBN-13: 978-1475972351

Paperback, 202 pages

Category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Other Formats: Kindle, eBook, Hardback

Available: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iUniverse, and others