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Book Review: Queen of Light and Solace by Tricia Meyers

05 Wednesday Jun 2024

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Author: Tricia Meyers
Publisher: Curious Cow Publishing
Series: Crescent Queens; Bk 2
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
Medium: eBook
ARC COPY

The blurb from Amazon: 

War is coming…

After the loss of nearly everything she holds most dear, Eve Darrow, Queen of Darkegrove, finds herself taking refuge in Falias. Hidden within the fae kingdom thought lost for centuries, she must find a way to liberate her home from the hands of the mysterious enemies that have invaded.

…and the second queen rises.

Faced with her father’s sudden life-threatening illness, Aurelia Vallyse, Crown Princess of Avellon, finds herself thrust onto the throne much sooner than expected. With the looming threat of an unknown enemy to the north, she must learn how to navigate her newfound role and decide if she can trust a mysterious seer with dire warnings of an ancient evil that threatens all of Aestera.

Review:

Diving into book two of the Crescent Queens was an absolute delight, and I was glad and grateful that I didn’t have to wait long after finishing the first one to continue the story thanks to the ARC I received.

We pick up more or less where we left off in Book One, Darkegrove fell to an invading army and Eve has taken refuge in Falias with the Fae while they plot and plan on how to move forward given circumstances.

Half of this book follows Eve’s point of view as she continues to move forward, now a Fae Queen in charge of a Human Realm, knowing at some point she has to had the throne over to a human but wanting to see it through this coming war as she gives serious thought to that future.

The other half of this book’s point of view follows Aurelia, who has to take the throne of Avellon much sooner than she ever expected, while on the precipice of war with an army the likes of which few have ever seen.

As a whole, this book kept moving, pushing you forward as both of our Queens deal with their powers, navigating a new relationship for our Queen of Light, and dealing with the war that is stretching across their portion of the world. The dual point of view was interesting because it was nice to still check in with Eve as she’s still a major player in the war, though in some ways it did feel like it didn’t allow Lia to fully step into her own, as this is her book.

I loved the story weaved around Lia and Sybella and how the two started to where they ended up by the end of this book – and I love their nicknames Sunshine and Moonlight for each other. It’s very fitting, especially when **Spoiler** is revealed about Sybella. (This is an ARC, sorry, no spoilers for you, wanna know that reveal, read this when it comes out!)

The use of magic has been a constant love of mine for book one, and continues into book two. It’s especially great too because we get to see the hows of the magic as Lia finds her way in using her powers, and we learn some deeper lore about the gods, the god favored, and the new enemy on the horizon that may be more powerful than even the gods.

Part of me wants to say I’d have loved to see a little more of the battle at the end of the book play out, but I’m not sure the book needed to be longer either. I’m not sure if it could have been a little swapped to give more Lia and battle flushed out if we’d had a little less Eve POV chapters. I did say it above, but I think with this being Queen of Light and Solace, it would have been nice to let Lia have a little more of the book, verses splitting it 50/50 with Eve, which Eve did get a full book to herself. While I appreciate getting Eve’s POV to see what’s going on with the Fae and that side of the allies, it doesn’t do Lia a much of a service, so I didn’t get to connect to Lia as much as I did Eve.

As a whole though, I am definitely glad I read this book, and I am even more excited for the third book now.

If you like strong Queens not letting men boss them around or take their power, set in a world rich with lore that you want to create a small flow chart for because it’s that deep (I love when the lore is this well flushed out personally), this is definitely a good series to dive into.

Book Review: Queen of Earth and Stone by Tricia Meyers

29 Wednesday May 2024

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Author: Tricia Meyers
Publisher: Curious Cow Publishing
Series: Crescent Queens; Bk 1
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Medium: eBook

The blurb from Amazon: 

Eve Darrow seeks to take the throne in a kingdom where women aren’t permitted to rule.

Split into three kingdoms, the continent of Aestera is divided by more than just geography. In contrast to her southern neighbors, the kingdom of Darkegrove has not seen a ruling queen in five centuries.

Following her father’s unexpected death, Eve aims to turn a kingdom resistant to change on its head, whether they agree or not. Her path is fraught with danger, and a mysterious warrior is called upon to protect her.

Callan Thorne, answering a plea for aid that he is bound to answer, finds himself protecting a princess determined to make history. Unexpected danger lurks around every corner, challenging even his resilience.

As she finds even people she trusts stand against her solitary revolution and will attempt to deter her by any means necessary, she must rely on the mysterious warrior summoned to keep her safe.

Friendships are made, secrets are revealed and hearts are broken. On her quest to forge her own destiny, Eve will discover that none can stand against fate and that not everything is as it seems.

Review: 

Let me start out by saying, I really loved this story, and will 100% dive into book two.

The beginning of the book is a little slow, as a forewarning if you’re looking to give this book a try. I’m not saying this to put anyone off, but more to curb expectations. For me, it picked up about chapter 8-9 and once I hit that mark, I didn’t want to stop and put the book down. I ended up spending my entire Saturday finishing the book off, not doing anything else because by that point I was that invested in Eve and Callan.

Now, you may be going, why is the book slow to start but still good and worth giving it a chance, right? Let me tell you, it’s because the world building took time. There’s care given to the world building, and the slow is partially, in my option and how I took it, done so in order to let it evolve organically. Because of that care, I think I had a deeper investment to our Princess and what she was going through.

My only mild irritation was that a couple things were repeated over and over again, like the author didn’t want me to forget, this is part of the lore. This is important. Don’t forget this. And for that, I wanted to go, yes! I got it! Please don’t repeat this again! Trust us as a reader, that we’ll remember it. Maybe something important warrants being said a second time, but when we get to fourth, sixth, tenth, my brain wants to remind people that it can retain information. Please don’t treat us like we’ll forget after a hundred pages THIS ONE THING.

But, I mean, it took me four days to read the book, and I spent an entire day consuming the end of it to make sure I didn’t have to deal with work while itching to read it.

If you like fantasy, badass Princesses, a bodyguard with secrets, and an immersive world that’s waiting for you to give right in with a rich lore, definitely give this book a try. You won’t be sorry. I certainly wasn’t.

Book Review: Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

16 Tuesday Jan 2024

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Author: Craig DiLouie
Publisher: Redhook
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Horror
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Paperback

The blurb from Amazon: 

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it delivers weekly hauntings investigated by a dedicated team of ghost hunting experts.

Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter’s holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It’s also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode Thirteen—and how everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

Review: 

I picked this up because it looked interesting and creepy and the back of the book sounded super interesting, ghost hunters filming their “Episode Thirteen” for their series are able to get into a location never before investigated before it’s being torn down for a resort.

The concept as a whole is interesting, the format of it being a book written from the perspective of found footage movies – think Blair Witch Project if you could read it, helped to keep it new and something I hadn’t seen before. I actually really loved the format concept, and they did a really good job of labeling everything, keeping the texts, journal entries, and what was documented off the film recordings clear and easily read.

The little blurbs on the book telling me it would ‘hook me, creep me out, and then overwhelm me’ gave me high hopes about the book and how creeped out I would be while reading it. Considering I’m giving the book three stars probably tells you that I was a little disappointed with the creep out factor.

The characters are well flushed out, and I loved that it was anchored in the real world as far as referencing other ghost hunting shows and the TV networks that air them, giving ‘Fade to Black’ comps so it felt like found footage in the written form. I also deeply love the way the author found a way to make found footage work on the page.

My issues and star drops start to happen because for me, while it’s a ghost hunting, horror suspense novel with review blurbs published on the front and back cover that promised me a hauntingly scary time. I wasn’t all that freaked out with the story. It didn’t haunt me, it didn’t make me fear the dark or the bumps in the night, and it didn’t really stay with me.

I’m also not entirely crazy about the ending and explanation of what’s going on. It kind of went around and around, but I’m not sure the ending really fit the horror suspense genre real well with the resolution of the book.

Do I regret reading it? No. I enjoyed the characters to a point and I did love the new experience to a differently formatted book.
Would I recommend it to others to read? Probably not. Especially not when going into it I expected horror and creep and scares that would make me want to keep the lights on when I went to bed.

Book Review: Hidden Witch by Tess Lake

19 Wednesday Oct 2022

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Author: Tess Lake
Publisher: Tess Lake
Series: Torrent Witches
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

An arsonist is hitting Harlot Bay, buildings around town going up and while one might have been looked at as faulty wiring, but too many buildings are going up. What’s worse is that there’s a sleazy real estate developer sniffing around Torrent Mansion wanting the property, a teen slip witch who’s angry at life (as teenagers misunderstood are), and her boyfriend is a little AWOL right now and unable to help her.

– Potential spoilers –

Shortly after a real estate developer makes an offer, then threats after the family refuse to sell Torrent Masion to him, the family bakery goes up in flames. Not the first of the fires in town, but also not the last. No, every time Harlow seems to have a feeling about a building, to check a place out, later that night the place goes up in flames.

So when an arson specialist comes into town to try and help the local police solve these fires to find out what’s going on, he puts his sights on Harlow. Who wouldn’t find it suspicious that she was one of the last people at the place that just ended up in flames.

It doesn’t help that she’s also under stress because the Bakery her family owned was funding the Mansion’s renovation and now the primary business that kept the family okay is going under. Things are starting to be stressful not just for her and her family. But time is running out to solve this whodunit before she’s arrested and taken in herself, blamed for fires she didn’t start. All while trying to help her grandmother with the teen slip witch that is still trying to understand her powers – something only Gran and Harlow can understand as slip witches themselves.

Another good installment of the series as we continue to dig deeper into the Torrent Family, and we definitely get a better understanding of slip witches because in this one we’re helping a new, untrained slip witch.

Book Review: Treasure Witch by Tess Lake

12 Wednesday Oct 2022

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Author: Tess Lake
Publisher: Tess Lake
Series: Torrent Witches
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

The Annual Gold Mud Run has come to Harlot Bay and its adjacent island off the coast, Truer Island. When Harlow finds the skeletons of a man and a little girl on the island, she’s pulled into the investigation by the ghost of a little girl. The further she digs into the mystery and the link between the girl and the skeletons, the more dangerous it gets for her because whoever killed and left them on the island doesn’t want her to find out the truth.

– – – Potential spoilers beyond this point – – –

It doesn’t help that for the last six weeks prior Harlow was frozen in place while she had carefully and magically taken care of the magical monster that had been doing the killings from the Butter Festival.

Everything had changed while Harlow was frozen in time. Her cousins had found love, the family mansion had started to undergo renovations to turn it into a bed and breakfast, and the man she’d accidentally stood up on a date with because she’d been frozen left town and is now back. The biggest thing she’s not taking well to is Jack Bishop’s return because he’s been looking to see and talk to her. Not that she wants to cross that bridge yet.

Her family had come up with some crazy travel plans to explain why she’d been missing for the last six weeks. Not that it really helps any because she’s still trying to wrap her head around everything that she’s missed.

The strive to work out the little ghost girl that suddenly kept appearing to her was so sweet as I read it, and I loved that she fought so hard to find out what happened to the little girl and her father, to help them find peace together in the end so they could move on.

How she does that, well, it wasn’t the easiest time for her, dodging both the potential boyfriend interest and the murderer trying to put her down so she’ll stop looking into this. Coupled with trying to keep her online newspaper running after six weeks of being dead to updates, well it’s a lot on her plate that will keep you reading and curious through to the end.

Book Review: Butter Witch by Tess Lake

28 Wednesday Sep 2022

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Author: Tess Lake
Publisher: Tess Lake
Series: Torrent Witches
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

Welcome to Harlot Bay, home to the Torrent witches along a small coast where the magic convergent seems to play havoc on the weather on any given day. We’re joining Harlow, our main character – resident journalist for an online newspaper for the town (employee roster 1) and Slip Witch, just in time for the Butter Festival. 

When one of the competitors at the festival is murdered, Harlow will stop at nothing to try and find out who the murderer is. And this is all between trying to keep her online newspaper going, managing her highly caffeinated cousins, meddling mom and aunts, and a great aunt who loves to craft things in an underground, hard-to-find laboratory. It’s enough to tire anyone out, really. 

– – – – Possible Spoilers Below – – – – 

Note: I have seen some of the reviews that say it’s very similar to another Witch series because it has similar family and romance setups. I do have that first book in my library to read soon™, but haven’t read that series as yet. So all I can voice is my opinion based on this book itself. Though to be fair to the author, you can have a similar setup or plot idea and still have a book unfold in a completely different way. I and a few other authors actually proved this when we all took the exact same starting theme and each wrote our own shorts. The stories, while stemming from the same idea starting point, were very different because of the point of view we each wrote from, our style of prose, and where we took the stories. 

Overall, I really loved this story. Harlow is interesting, as is her whole family dynamic. She’s one of three cousins, and her family – her cousins, her mother, and her aunts – all live in a large house that’s been in the family for ages. 

I enjoyed our introduction to the town, Harlot Bay, as a dying seaside town, which was once a favorite destination of pirates for a specific reason (cough cough). She informs us that the town used to be a tourist trap that’s been slowly dying, which is also where the Butter Festival comes in. As a push to continue to keep Harlot Bay on the map as a must-visit, the town is hosting this international festival. The idea of an entire festival dedicated to butter – down to a butter carving contest. Yes, you read that right, butter carving. It’s like your ice festivals where you have super famous ice carvers come in and use chainsaws to sculpt the ice into these completely fascinating and intricate statues, only it’s butter. 

When Harlow stumbles across the dead body of one of the contestants, drained of its blood by magical means, she takes it upon herself to try and figure out who the murderer is and why they took the blood. But things aren’t so easy when you have a couple suspects and a town filled with tourists for the festival milling about. 

The Slip Witch concept is an interesting one and something that takes a little getting used to. The concept behind it is that Harlow’s magic fluctuates, though there’s no real reason for why it does. Just that when she’s least expecting it, she’ll go from a water witch to a fire witch. It also shifts her spell-casting ability, some spells will suddenly become harder to cast. 

The ending of the book, I won’t spoil it, you’ll have to read it yourself, was a really interesting way to go with handling the whodunit portion and the position it put Harlow in. And I can’t wait to see where this series goes. 

Book Review: Grits, Gamblers, and Grudges by Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas

21 Wednesday Sep 2022

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Author: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Publisher: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Series: Beachside Books Magical Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

The bookstore is doing well and Paige is comfortable in the little home she’s made for herself on the second floor with the room and little bathroom. It almost feels like home. But when a plumbing problem has an inspector in, she learns she’s not zoned to be able to live on the property until she gets the zoning changed.

Add to the mix the dead body found in the basement by the Plumber, and there are now more questions that need an answer to than Paige has the time and bandwidth to explore. Was her Aunt a killer? If not, how did the body find its way into the basement?

Potential spoilers ahead

When it rains, it really does pour on Paige. Not only does she find herself having to find a new home because her building is only zoned as a commercial space with no partial residency zoning, but there’s also a dead body in the basement. Now the town is whispering about how her Aunt Nora might have been a murderer. While both take priority for her, clearing her Aunt’s name takes a major focus for her as she apartment hunts.

The last thing that she wants to do is end up in her brother’s spare bedroom. While he and his wife are kind enough to offer the space to Paige, rent-free, Paige is determined to a more than stubborn sticking point, to not end up there and find her own place. However, everything in town that might be in her price range gross, falling apart, or weirdly strict on furniture and clothes – something I’m not entirely sure is legal if you’re renting a place as your own, it’s looking more and more like she’ll have to take her family up on the offer.

The twist comes from exactly who was the killer and how the body ended up being in Aunt Nora’s bookshop basement. It’s a twist that I started to see coming as we progressed through the book. This one grated on my nerves a little, it seemed like Paige wasn’t learning or growing anymore to me. It was also a little predictable and I found myself growing bored with it as we continued. For that reason, I won’t be finishing the series, personally.

Book Review: Apples, Actors and Axes by Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas

14 Wednesday Sep 2022

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Author: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Publisher: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Series: Beachside Books Magical Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

As Paige settles into her home in Comfort Cove, Texas with her bookstore. She’s even back to trying to write again now that she’s settled in. However, things pick up because a famous director has created a treasure hunt that promises the winner a role in his new movie, and the clues seem to hint at Comfort Cove so of course actors have flocked to town. But when one of the treasure hunters ends up dead on the beach, and Paige’s Detective brother sets his sights on Paige’s new assistant as the killer, it’s a race to find out who did it before her assistant is put away for something he may not have done.

Possible spoilers ahead.

We’re greeted to Paige settling into life in the bookstore, living in the small bedroom above the shop in the building, it’s left her without having to actually find a place to live now that she’s settled in the little town. Though she can’t officially tell if the uptick of customers in the shop are because the town has an influx of treasure hunters and actors looking for a prize or the cute new guy manning the till behind the counter for her. Either way, for the most part, Paige isn’t going to complain. Or well, not as long as they’re buying stock from her shop at least.

But when Paige’s brother adds her new assistant, and several other actors, to the suspect list after a body is found on the beach, Paige decides to get involved with the investigation, with the help of her new witchy coven. Her brother, naturally, doesn’t love that she’s getting herself involved in a police matter, but she does help some in finding out the who dun it.

Coupled with treasure hunters that are claiming to have found the treasure and stirring up more trouble, the town starts to get a little more chaotic. There is a good twist at the end with the treasure, which I was pleasantly surprised by, and overall it’s another cute book. I will say that for a series that’s supposed to be a ‘magical’ cozy, I’m not getting a lot of magical. It’s mostly just a bookstore owner getting involved in her brother’s business because he’s the detective and saying she’s in a coven.

Book Review: Pasta, Pirates & Poison by Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas

07 Wednesday Sep 2022

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Author: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Publisher: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Series: Beachside Books Magical Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

Paige is living her best life sipping wine and working on her romance novel in one of the most romantic countries in the world, Italy. But all of that changes when she gets a call and has to fly home to Texas for her beloved Aunt who falls ill.

Quicker than she’d like, her Aunt passes and she finds herself with her Aunt’s failing bookstore, cousins who aren’t happy inheriting their aunt’s house, and a mysterious message from her Aunt that hints at buried treasure somewhere on the house’s property. Before Pagie can consider returning to Italy, she has to untangle the mystery and find the treasure. But will she even survive to return to Italy?

Potential spoilers beyond this point

Overall this book started off interesting. Paige has moved to Italy because she thinks she’ll have a better chance at writing her book about love in a romantic country with a beautiful view. But it’s not exactly the life she’d thought it was, because the reality is she’s working a small job to pay rent on a house she’s sharing with others, and her novel is kind of stagnant on the page due to writer’s block.

While she grumbles about having to return to Texas for her Aunt, the move gives her life a new chapter as it were. She not only inherits her Aunt’s failing bookstore, but she discovers that there’s the ghost of an old pirate captain that’s tied to one of the books in the shop, and his long buried treasure was found by her Aunt and then hidden carefully away in the house.

Which means it’s a race against time to try and find the treasure because her cousins are selling the house because they don’t want it, and inherited it so it’s theirs to do with as they will. Naturally, others have heard of the buried treasure as well and are looking to buy it for the same reason.

By cleaning up and trying to get the bookstore on its feet again, Paige gets to learn and connect with her late Aunt in a way she hadn’t understood she could before, learns about herself, and finds a potential future if she wants to grab it with both hands.

It’s definitely a cute start to a series and it caught my interest enough to want to continue to the next book.

Book Review: The Olympus Trinity by Brian Coggins Jr

06 Wednesday Apr 2022

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Author: Brian Coggins Jr.
Publisher: Brian Coggins Jr.
Genre: Mythology
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Release Date: April 11, 2022

Synopsis: When a mysterious figure comes to Zeus’ home, he turns to his brother Hades for answers. But Poseidon is seeking answers too, and his way clashes with Zeus’. The three will need to put aside their differences if they are going to unravel the mystery that’s tied to their past.

Review:
Note: I’m going to try and keep it as spoiler-free as possible because this is a new release. Also, I was given an ARC copy of this book and am leaving my honest review.

I love mythology and grew up deep in some of the Greek Myths, so when I was asked to review the book I was really excited to do so.

The setting of the universe for this novel was interesting and incredibly unique, with there being different planets that the gods travel to. The descriptions, for the most part, do well is helping me be immersed in the area we were in at various times. As well, the plot of the book was incredibly interesting in the way they weaved various myths through the novel as a whole.

The personalities for the gods were an interesting choice and like the dialogue seemed to shift occasionally between formal and having a more royal sense to it and occasionally sliding into being a little more casual and what you’d expect to hear today. However, the tension between the brothers was well done and kept you hooked on watching their interactions unfold.

The writing in the book kept the story moving forward and kept you well immersed in the novel, though at times I had to reread sections because occasionally it got a little clunky. But overall, the plot and the big theme of family kept me going to the end. Some of it, in my opinion, could be a little more smoothed out, but as a whole, the story is a good read and it’s a great start to what will clearly have more to come.