Lola

Lola is the girlfriend of Garcia.  Garcia is the supposed leader of a gang known as the Crenshaw Six.

What nobody really knows is that Lola is actually the brains behind the Gang.  At least that is what the back cover copy tells me.

Drawn to the book because of its cover (I know, I know, never judge a book by the cover) I thought it sounded like an interesting read.

The novel starts off at a cookout.  And I don't think I ever made it out of the first chapter. I picked it up and started reading it a number of times, but kept putting it aside.  Nothing in the opening pages of the book grabbed me and made me want to keep reading.  Men grilling. Women being catty in the kitchen.  Younger girl prowling around the men.

After a couple of weeks of false starts, I give up.

This one goes into my Did Not Finish pile.  Maybe I'll give it another chance in the year ahead.  We'll see.

Full Wolf Moon by Lincoln Child: Book Review

Has enigmologist Jeremy Logan finally met his match?

Full Wolf Moon by Lincoln Child is a book I picked up off the NEW shelf on my last library trip.

I've never read anything by Lincoln Child before, though the cover proclaims him to be a New York Times #1 bestselling author.  Speaing of the cover, it is the reason I picked up the book.  It boasts a spooky cabin in the middle of nowhere, similar to the cover of The Hexed.  I guess I had a theme going on during that trip.

Jeremy Logan is an enigmalogist --an investigator who specalizes in analyzing unnatural phenomena.

He travels to an isolated retreat deep in the Adirondacks in an attempt to finish his monograph.  However, he's approached by an old friend on his very first night at the retreat and finds himself investigating a series of deaths in the area, as a favor.

Every time he tries to tell himself he's finished with the investigation he finds some other small tidbit of information that draws him back in.  He has seen a lot of strange things in his investigations, but could there possibly be an actual werewolf hunting the Adirondack Mountains?

What I Liked about Full Wolf Moon

You don't see many werewolf novels.  At least not ones where the werewolf is a killer animal and not some hot guy for the female protag to fall in love with.  I'm a sucker for a good old fashioned monster story.

While most of the book is following the investigation and you don't know who/what the killer is until the climax, I like that you do get to see some of the action from the POV of the victims.  Again, I'm a sucker for a monster story and they are much more fun when you see the monster.

What I Didn't Like About Full Wolf Moon

Its part of a series.  AGAIN.  What is it with series these days?

Again, similar to The Hexed, the story seems to stand alone.  There is mention of  Jeremy's wife, and his losing her.  You don't get that whole story but none of it seems to pertain to the story in this novel.
Other than being book #5 follow Jeremy Logan on his adventures I can't think of much I didn't like about the tale.

Over all I give Full Wolf Moon a 4 out of 5 star rating.  It was a captivating read that kept me turning pages until the end.  Once the momentum kicked in it never slowed down enough to dull the story.  It's certainly not "keep you up at night" horror, but its a good story.  I'd recommend it to anyone who loves horror/thriller reads.

Full Wolf Moon is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback, audobook and Audio CD formats.

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If you don't want to start in book five, you can pick up any of the first 4 novels below:

Amanda Wakes Up by Alisyn Camerota follows Amanda Gallo on her quest to become a news Anchor.  It is all she has ever wanted from the time she was a teen.  When a media mogul offers her a spot  on the team of a band new cable news network she couldn't have been happier.
FAIR News is all about showing BOTH sides of the story....but is it really?

Launching during an election year, Amanda's stories are a hotbed of hot topics and her new job is leaking into her personal life.  It's affecting her love life, her relationship with her mother, and even the way she looks at the world around her.

It leads up to her chance to break the biggest story of the year, and what is means to her morality vs her lifelong dream.

What I Liked about Amanda Wakes Up

Amanda has a dream, and she chases it.  She truly believes in the Fair and Equal concept.  I like that about her because she reminds me of myself.  Like, you can have your on beliefs and STILL try to see the other side without being violent about it.

I liked the scenes where she was on the show with her co-host and her camera crew, but not talking politics.  I would have like to seen more of her on the job interactions.

What I Didn't Like about Amanda Wakes Up

It took me over a week to get through the first 30 pages of this story.  The opening didn't grab me at all.

There seemed to be a whole lot of TELLING vs SHOWING in the story.  Especially the first few chapters.  Our heroine, Amanda Gallo, was first reporter on a scene of a major even, and did some awesome investigative reporting which is what lands her the job this whole book is about.  But, we SEE none of that.  We are TOLD it happens.  I think I could have gotten into the story so much faster if we had seen her work.

I didn't "connect" with Amanda Gallo.  A book is best when you feel like you are living life with the MC.  I felt like I was being told aobut someone, somewhere, with vague detail, and supposed to feel for them.

Predictability.  I saw 90% of what happened in this book coming, long before it got there.

Politics.  Reading this book was like watching the election all over again. *shudder*

Over all I give Amanda Wakes Up a 3 out of 5 star rating.  Its a book I read.  I wish it had been more about working on an early morning talk show and less about politics, but I  don't regret reading it.  If you want a light fluffy read without a lot of detail, this is totally a book for you.

Amanda Wakes Up is available on amazon in Kindle, Hardcover and Audio though audible.
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Not sure you want to read this? See my other book reviews to find something you might like better.
(Disclaimer: I received a copy of Amanda Wakes Up from Blogging For Books in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own.)

The Hexed by Heather Graham

Available on amazon.

I picked up The Hexed by Heather Graham on one of my library trips.  I grabbed it off the shelf because of the cover (yes, I judge books by their covers) and tossed it in my take home bag because the back cover piqued my interest.

Devin Lyle inherited her great-aunts cabin, when suddenly a woman is murdered nearby.

Craig Rockwell is a new member of a special FBI team known as The Krewe of Hunters.  They are paranormal investigators.  The recently discovered body is very similar to one he found int he woods as a teen.
Devin and Agent Rockwell, of course, start to fall for each other as the case progresses. But will they get to the bottom of the case before Devin becomes the next victim?

It turns out that The Hexed is the 13th book in a series of 20.  Normally I hate picking up a book and finding out its part of a series.  This time it didn't bother me.  There was enough back-story of the characters that you didn't feel like you missed anything, and its not part of a continuous series where you have to have read everything before and everything after to get the complete story.

What I Liked About The Hexed

I liked that it was a stand alone novel instead of me having to worry about getting my hands on the whole series to know what I was reading about.

Of course I liked the paranormal aspect of The Hexed.  FBI agents who not only see but also can communicate with ghosts!  What's not to like?

I liked that the romance between Devin and "Rocky" didn't take over the whole book.  It was about them finding the killer, not about their mad love affair.

I liked "Crazy" great-aunt Mina, even though she didn't really add much to the story.

I liked that Devin inherited a raven from her Aunt to go along with the cottage instead of a cat.  Cats are so overdone.

What I Didn't Like

There are two main arguments throughout The Hexed that annoyed me.

One was the "It looks like this murder is connected to Wicca." vs "Wiccans don't kill!" argument.  This popped up many times throughout the novel.  Usually it came to light when two people, who are both open-minded and agree on the second point, kept talking in circles about it.  Certain aspects of the murders clearly pointed towards witchcraft, but any mention of it brought out a "Wiccan's don't kill" argument.

The second was the "It can't be one of my friends, it must be one of your's!" argument.  Something they might have said once and gotten over, but not after every single interview.

The Verdict

3 out of 5 stars

I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it either.  It took a couple of tries for me to get into the story, and the 2 annoying arguments above kept making me set it aside.  I may go on to read more of the series, but I may not and won't be telling ayone "You HAVE to read this!"

If you do want to give it a try The Hexed by Heather Graham is available on amazon in Kindle, Audio and Paperback forms.

Or, if you're rather start from the beginning you can check out Phantom Evil: Book 1 in the Krewe of Hunters series.

God Gave us Family

Little Pup is on his way to a family reuinion with his mom and dad.

On the way he asks why there is only one kid in his family but other families have lots of kids.  Papa says that God gives families and every family is different.

While rowing in a boat they pass different families.  The bear famiy has an adopted child.  Th goose family has a single mom most of the time.  One child lives with their grandparents.

Then Little Pup learns that the rest of their pack are family too, even if they are not related to us.  And he also learns that family is still family, even when they are annoying.

In the end they get to the reunion and Little Pup plays with his cousins and pack members.

It is a cute book, from the "God Gave Us...." series of books.  The most popular which I think as God Gave Us You.


The artwork was cute and it would make a great addition to any Christian family's book collection.

I will say that none of the families in the book have parents who are same sex.  Of course since this is a Christian book we couldn't really expect them to include that facet of life could we?

There are also no families without children, so you have to have a child to be a family?

I received my copy of God Gave us Family though Blogging for Books in exchange for an hontest review.  Any opinions expressed in this post are my own.

If you would like your on copy it is on Amazon in Kindle or Hardcover.

Draw 50 Sea Creatures Step by Step

Draw 50 Sea Creatures
The Step-by-step Way to Draw
Fish, Sharks, Mollusks, Dolphins and More!

Available on Amazon

Draw 50 Sea Creatures is a simple book on, you guessed it, how to draw sea creatures!

The only equipment you'll need is a medium or soft pencil, paper to draw on, and a kneaded eraser.

There is not a lot of written content in the book.  There is a letter to the reader giving you just a handful of tips on how to use this book to improve your drawing.

There is also a short letter to teachers on why that even though freedom of self expression is important, its also important for young artists to learn how to do things step by step as well.

From there it is just page after page of how to Draw 50 Sea Creatures.  Most of the creatures break it down into 6 steps.  A couple have 8 steps drawn for you to follow.  Even with 8 steps, some of the more detailed animals have several details are added in one step.

To me this makes this book more suitable for someone with some drawing talent as opposed to an absolute beginner. I'm not a very talented artist.  Here are 2 animals I drew from the book. 

The anemone was pretty easy, but you can see that the step by step didn't do much for me with the seahorse.



Lee J. Ames, the artist behind the Draw 50 series has been drawing for most of his life.  His first job was for the Walt Disney Studios when he was 18.  Since then he has led a career as an advertising artist, fine artist, cartoonist, designer, animation in-betweener, illustrator, and as an artist-in residence at Doubleday. 

It is his minimalist approach to teaching drawing that makes the 26 books of the Draw 50 series such a success.

(Disclaimer:  This book was received from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts and comments... and bad seahorse drawings ...are my own.)

Ninth City Burning

An alien race had come to make Earth theirs.  The war has raged for five centuries.  It was nearly the end of the world.

Growing up in this shattered environment isn't easy for anyone.  Some, like Jax, grew up in an elite military academy, training for battle.  Others, like Naomi, grew up nomadic roaming the wilds of a ruined Earth, it means a daily fight for survival.

When paths cross Jax and Naomi, along with other fighters and survivors must find a way to turn back the invasion.  Otherwise their home will finally be completely destroyed.

Ninth City Burning does the thing that so many books do these days that I hate.  It hops back and forth from different POV.  Starting out with different characters in different cities who all eventually converge.  

Frankly I would have like to have seen more of Naomi's story.  I was annoyed that the tale around her and her tribe converged so quickly with the high-tech society.  SO I guess I would have lieked a post apocalyptic survival story instead of a Sci-fi tale.

The overall story was interesting.  How the world handled a multi-year inter-dimensional war.  The underlying theme of "OMG YOU'RE TOO YOUNG FOR WAR, but we're gonna make you do it anyway" got to be really annoying after a while.  Especially since this is a thick 500+ page read.

I could see Ninth City Burning making a big-budget big screen movie one day, maybe, but it didn't really make me want to change my favorite reading genre to Sci-fi.

I did get this book for free from blogging for books, but all thoughts and opinions are mine.

Home on the Range Book Review

Available on Amazon

Nick Stafford has been working on his family's ranch, trying to proove he is the "good son."  Despite a strong commitment to be a better husband, father and ranch manager than his father was, Nick has found himself a single father.  One of his daughters is having trouble in school and he has to think past his Stafford stuborness and do what is best for his girls.

Dr. Elsa Andreas has suffered her own tragedy.  One that caused her to abandon her family practice and hide in a dark corner of Gray's Glen.  Her sister, the school principal, convinced her to come out of hiding to help the Stafford girls.

Nick is smitten with Elsa, and she with he, but they both agree to put the girls first.  Can Nick put aside his stuborn side, or will Elsa's hidden secret keep them apart despite both of them wishing the best for the girls?

Home on the Range is the 2nd book in the Double S Ranch series.  (Books 1 and 3 follow the other two Stafford brothers.)  It is a Fictional Christian Romance.

Normally I don't read or enjoy romance novels, but I chose to read this one because of the cover art, of a little girl hanging on to her fathers leg.

Reading Home on the Range I was in love with the charactger of Dr. Elsa.  I loved her Hobbit hole in the woods.  I loved her eccentric parrot.  I loved how much she loved Nick's daughters.  Her fear and distrust in certain people felt right with me

This quote from another chacrater in the book stuck with me:

"We cannot blame God for the evils of people.  We are inclined to sin.  But if each of us maes her corner of the world as sweet and good as she can, she blesses many, unseen."

In a not entirley unexpeted twist, the girls mother shows up.  One that happened I kept expeting things to be done and said that never were.  I was happy that the book wasn't so predictible that I knew what would happen before it did.

If you like a light Romance with Christian undertones I would recommend you read Home on the Range. I enjoyed it enough to read it in a couple of days.  However I didn't enjoy it enough to be tempted to check out the other books in the series.  I guess its just not my genre.

If you are interested in checking it out, Home on the Range  is available in several formats on amazon, along with the rest of the series.


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I received my copy of Tell Me How This Ends Well for free from Blogging For Books. All opinions are my own.

Tell Me How This Ends Well

Set in the future (slightly, the year is 2022), Tell Me How This Ends Well features each of the three Jacobson children.

Mo, Edith, Jacob, along with their parents have all gathered together for Passover at Mo's home.  Their mother is very ill, and this might be their last year together.

For the sake of their mother, the children have decided to kill their father.

Throughout the book, you get to see through the eyes of each of the siblings.  We see their father as a raging tyrant from childhood onward.  More than once we see him trying to harm or even kill his own children.

What you don't see much of is their mother.  Rarely does she show up in the backstory and the result of that is that you don't much care for her.  At least I didn't.  Why should I care if they kill their father for her?  She is almost a non-entity.

Meanwhile, the narrators are also rather unlikeable.  Jacob is whiny, Mo is egocentric and materialistic, and I'm pretty sure Edith has some sort of dangerous personality disorder.

Sure, Julian Jacobson is a clearly loathsome character, but the children and wife don't have a lot going for them.

I put the novel down several times to read other books in between.  It wasn't bad enough to give up on entirely as I have other books (see A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing) but it didn't grab me.

Meanwhile, in the distant future of 2022, the world has become very anti-Semitic (much like our current anti-Muslim world view).  Other than the fact that Jacob's boyfriend is German I don't see where it added to the story at all.  Enid ran into a couple of unpleasant people, and suicide bombings are mentioned throughout the book, but overall it played no part in the larger story aside from the very end which could have been re-written to keep from having all the other pointless moments from the rest of the book.

Unfortunately, overall, I don't see myself recommending this book to anyone.  If you want to give it a try anyway, Tell Me How This Ends Well is available in multiple formats on Amazon.

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I received my copy of Tell Me How This Ends Well for free from Blogging For Books. All opinions are my own.

The Fifth Petal

The Fifth Petal is a novel by Brunonia Barry.

On Halloween night a teenaged boy dies unexpected, and some town members blame Rose Whelan.
Rose Whelan also happened to have been involved in an unsolved murder case from 1989.

Callie Cahill had thought Rose to be dead, so she returns to Salem for the first time since she was taken away when she was 5.

While some people thought Rose killed the young man, and the "Goddesses" many years before, Callie loved Rose like a mother and insists she didn't kill the goddesses but rescued Callie from the person who did.

John Rafferty, Salem's sheriff, also thinks Rose is innocent.  He wants to help Callie find the missing piece of the puzzle or the "Fifth Petal" of the rose.  However, the town is beginning to think he is biased, and his time to solve the riddle is running short.

The Fifth Petal is the third in a series of books that circles around the same town and characters.  I have not read the first two books in the series, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the tale.

I felt for Callie and for Rose.  I with they could have both had a happier ending.

I was pretty sure I had figure out who the real killer was, and I turned out to be right.

There were a couple of side characters in the novel I wish I could have gotten to know better.  If there is ever another book featuring them I will probably read it.

I give this novel a 4 out of 5.
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I received a copy of this novel free from Blogging for Books, but all thoughts and opinions on it are my own.
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Flash Fiction Magazine Giveaway

Have you ever wanted to read something, but don't have the time (or energy) to commit to a full length novel?

How long has it been since you've treated yourself to the bite sized morsel of short fiction?

Flash Fiction Magazine is giving away 3 of their shot story collections in paperback.  All together that would be 130 flash and micro fiction stories for you to read.

Enter to win these 3 collections today!

From established and up and coming authors, each story has something to offer you, and you don't have to say "I don't have time to read" as each one is short and quick.

I own Volumes 1 and 3, so I can tell you they are worth reading.

Interested, ENTER TO WIN HERE:

http://upvir.al/ref/o6038723

Even if you don't win the Grand Prize, there are plenty of (17) runner up prizes, each also a worthy short story collection.

But you have to act fast!  There are only 2 days left (as of my writing this on 4-19-17) to enter this Flash Fiction Magazine Giveaway.

Or, if you just can't wait to read them all volumes of Flash Fiction Magazine are available on amazon in digital format.

Holding Up the Stars

This is book 3/60 read in 2017.

Libby Strout was once known for being the Fattest Teenager in America.  After suffering the humiliation of having to be cut out of her own house, and losing a lot of weight, she is ready to face the world, and her peers, again.  She has no (well, just a little) fear as she enters high school for the firs time.

Jack Masseline is your typical bad boy.  He has to keep up a tough facade to hide his painful secret.  He can't recognize faces.  Even his family, his own brothers, are strangers to him once he looks away and looks back.  But so far he's kept everyone from finding out.

Now that Libby and Jack are in the same school together their paths cross in part because of a horrible game called "Fat Girl Rodeo."

While Libby thinks that Jack is just like everyone else, Jack can't help being drawn to her.  There is something about Libby Strout that he can't put his finger on, something that makes her different.  And he doesn't mean her size.

The book Holding Up the Stars could have set itself up to be a cookie cutter "teen drama."  When you got into a YA story about an empowered fat girl, and the schools bad boy it usually follows the same path.  Girl falls for boy.  Boy dates girl as a bet.  Boy falls for girl.  Girl finds out she was part of a bet.  Girl hates boy.  Etc, etc, etc.

Rest assured that Holding up the Universe doesn't follow that overdone storyline.

We see the story unfold through Libby's eyes AND through Jacks.  We see Libby's strength and her insecurities. We get to see past the bad boy facade of Jack and find out how terrified he is most of the time, forever surrounded by strangers.  I usually hate books broken up into Multiple points of view.  Especially when its multiple points of view AND flashbacks.

I really enjoyed this novel though and could hardly put it down once I started reading it.  Jennifer Niven did a wonderful job bringing to live two vastly different characters and showing how their lives intertwine perfectly.

This is a novel I needed to read when I was the fat girl in school.  While it's not the moral of the story Libby is a shining example that it is possible to be fat, and to love yourself and enjoy your life all at the same time.

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Holding up the Universe is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardcover and Paperback.

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I received a copy of this novel free from Blogging for Books, but all thoughts and opinions on it are my own.
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Dark Energy by Robison Wells

Warning: This review may contain MILD spoilers for the novel Dark Matter.

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A spaceship has crashed in the Midwest.  It fell first on Iowa, then skidded tow hundred and fifty miles north into Minnesota.  Thousands of human lives were ended.  Now the world is waiting for whatever is in the ship to come out.

This is why Alice had to move from Miami, Florida.  Her dad is the director of special projects for NASA.  He has to go to the site of the crash and Alice has to go to The Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented.

While she's trying to decide whether she falls into the Gifted or Talented portion of the school, the crash landed visitors finally make an appearance, and suddenly everything changes.

They call themselves the Guides, and they look very Human.

While the leader of the thousands housed inside the giant spaceship are talking with Government leaders, two of the younger aliens also end up at the Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented.

One of them becomes first roommates, then friends, with the young alien woman.

Then things get even stranger....

This novel had a couple of twists I didn't expect, and a couple of plot points that you could see coming from a mile away.  And some things that made you roll your eyes because they were a little TOO good to be true, even in a fictional novel.

I would recommend this one to anyone who enjoys YA Earthbound Sci-Fi.

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Dark Energy is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardback and Paperback.

Dead Until Dark A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

Book 1/60
2017 Reading Challenge

Our heroine in Dead Until Dark is Sookie Stackhouse.  Too sweet and naive for her own good, Sookie lives in the small town of Bon Temps with her grandmother and works at a local bar.  Many of the bar's patrons call her Crazy Sookie because she's not exactly normal.

Sookie Stackhouse can read minds.

When a vampire walks into the bar one night, she is excited.  Most of the undead would rather go to New Orleans.

The vampire Bill, however, wants to mainstream, to live with humans.  And he finds Sookie Stackhouse very appealing.

When she realized she can't hear Bill's thoughts, even if she tries, then he becomes very appealing to her as well.

Unfortunately, young women in Bon Temps start turning up dead.  Young women with a lot in common with Sookie.  They worked menial jobs and they had affections for vampires.

Sookie wants to make sure nobody points a finger at HER vampire for these crimes.  Instead, people start looking at her brother.

While trying to navigate the rocky road of an interspecies relationship Sookie finds herself doing something she has never done before, opening her ability to read the minds of everyone around her, trying to save her brother from going to prison for crimes he didn't commit.

But if he didn't do it, then who did?

I was introduced to Charlaine Harris as an author through her Midnight, Texas trilogy.  I enjoyed the characters in that series very much.  Another reviewer mentioned that some of the characters crossed over with the Sookie Stackhouse novels (Sookie herself was mentioned in passing) and I decided I wanted to try to read those novels as well.

I asked for, and received, this novel as a Christmas gift.

I enjoyed Dead until Dark just as much as the first novels I read, and look forward to collecting and reading the rest of the series.

Dead Until Dark is the first book in a series of novels featuring Sookie Stackhouse.  It is available on Amazon in Kindle, Hardcover and Mass Market Paperback.



Dead Until Dark, and the Sookie Stackhouse novel's, were made into a series on HBO called True Blood.  You can purchase Seasons 1-7 in a complete box set.



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