Category: AUTHOR

4/5, AUTHOR, B, Book Review, Cotton Malone, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016, SERIES

Review: The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry

Tara

The Jefferson Key
by Steve Berry

The Jefferson Key

Copyright: 2011

Pages: 513

Read: June 19-30, 2016

Rating: 4/5

Source: Grandmother

 

 

Blurb: Four presidents of the United States have been assassinated – in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963 – each murder seemingly unrelated. But what if those presidents were all killed for the same shocking reason: a clause contained in the United States Constitution? This is the question faced by former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone. When President Danny Daniels is nearly killed in the heart of Manhattan, Malone risks his life to foil the murder – only to find himself at odds with the Commonwealth, a secret society of pirates first assembled during the American Revolution. Racing across the nation and taking to the high seas, Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt must break a secret cipher originally possessed by Thomas Jefferson, unravel a mystery concocted by Andrew Jackson, and unearth a document forged by the Founding Fathers themselves – one powerful enough to make the Commonwealth unstoppable.

Review: The last Cotton Malone book in this series is actually one I ended up not finishing. It revolved around a Chinese storyline of some sort and I vaguely remember being heavily pregnant with Katelyn and just not interested. So I DNF’ed it. Seeing as how my daughter is over a year old now, it’s obviously been a while since I last met up with Cotton. I obviously missed something in the previous book (how Cotton and Cassiopeia ended up a couple), but overall that wasn’t really a big surprise.

So what did I think about this book? Well this is the first time Mr. Berry has set Cotton primarily in the United States. And I loved it. My one and only complaint is that it was over 500 pages – common for these books – but definitely tough on me personally as a reader these days. And while this is the 7th in the series, it stands well on its own, but I do highly recommend meeting Cotton from the beginning!

So overall … a good book, if rather long. Definitely recommended.

3/5, AUTHOR, B, Book Review, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016

Review: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Tara

Fool Moon
by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon

Copyright: 2001

Pages: 401

Read: June 9-18, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Paperbackswap

 

 

Blurb: Business has been slow. Okay, business has been dead. And not even of the undead variety. You would think Chicago would have a little more action for the only professional wizard in the phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn’t been able to dredge up any kind of work – magical or mundane.

But just when it looks like he can’t afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise.

A brutally mutilated corpse. Strange-looking paw prints. A full moon. Take three guesses – and the first two don’t count…

Review: So I read the first book in the Harry Dresden series, Storm Front, a full two years ago. I knew going into this one I might have some problems remembering who was who and what was what. Honestly, I really didn’t have much trouble jumping back in with Harry and his friends.

Overall I suppose this is just an average book. It was just an okay book for me. I want to like paranormal books, but I still have a lot of trouble accepting these crazy happenings. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to explain. I suppose I just have trouble suspending my beliefs long enough and accepting that I’m reading about wizards and werewolves.

So while this book wasn’t bad, it probably won’t be very memorable down the road for me. However, I can say that I’m more than willing to give Harry another chance … maybe in a couple of years 😉

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, D, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016

Review: The Dead Place by Rebecca Drake

Tara

The Dead Place
by Rebecca Drake

The Dead Place

Copyright: 2008

Pages: 359

Read: June 4-8, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Paperbackswap

 

 

Blurb: The first victim is found floating in a creek – naked, beautiful, brutally garroted. Lily Slocum was a college student with everything to live for and nothing to fear … until a madman made her his obsession…

At first glance, a quiet campus town like Wickfield seems like the ideal place for Kate Corbin to start over after a traumatic attack. But when another young girl disappears on her way to class, Kate’s fear resurfaces in earnest. She’s right to be afraid. Behind Wickfield’s picture-perfect facade, a nightmare is unfolding … and it’s about to strike chillingly close to home…

A serial killer is on the loose … ruthless, twisted, and lethally smart. Now, locked in a desperate race against time, Kate’s only chance of stopping a madman’s grisly game is to venture deeper into a diabolical web where no one is who they seem to be … and the smallest mistake could be her last…

Review: My thoughts on this book are going to be difficult to explain. First off, it’s not a bad book. However, I can’t really say that I enjoyed it all that much. It was just an “eh” read for me.

You see, I couldn’t stand the main character – Kate. I understood that she had been through a traumatic experience (rape), but at the same time, she was also losing her grip on reality completely. And yet she fought the idea of therapy/medication to help her function properly. She made wild accusations and did incredibly stupid things throughout this book. It’s precisely because of her behavior that I just couldn’t stomach much more of her. And then at the end it was like nothing had ever happened – everything was all hunky dory! I don’t know … her character just didn’t work for me…

There were a lot (and I mean a lot) of really stupid grammatical errors that should have been caught before publication. This also didn’t help my opinion of this book.

The plot didn’t seem very interesting to me – I’m pretty sure I could have read something along these same lines somewhere along the way in the last 10+ years that I’ve been reading thrillers. So there wasn’t anything “new” … no great twist, no surprises. It was (and I hate to use this word in reviews) predictable.

So bottom line … not a terrible book, but definitely forgettable.

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016

Review: Pray for Silence by Linda Castillo

Tara

Pray for Silence
by Linda Castillo

Pray for Silence.jpg

Copyright: 2010

Pages: 322

Read: May 28 – 31, 2016

Rating: 4/5

Source: Paperbackswap

 

 

Blurb: The Planks moved from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to the small Amish community of Painters Mill hoping to resume the comforts of the Plain Life in Ohio. Less than one year later, the family of seven is found dead – slaughtered on their own farm.

Police Chief Kate Burkholder and her small force have few clues, no motive, and no suspect. But when the diary belonging to the rebellious teenager Mary Plank turns up, Kate is surprised to find a murder suspect: the charismatic stranger who stole Mary’s heart. Then there’s Mary’s brother, Aaron, who’s been shunned by his family and the rest of the Amish community.

Formerly Amish herself, Kate becomes immersed in the case, and as her obsession grows, so does her resolve to bring the killer to justice – even if it means putting herself in to the line of fire…

Review: I read the first book in this series back in March and just absolutely fell in love with it. So I was more than anxious to read the second one. What’s surprising is that I didn’t follow my normal routine and wait 3 years before reading the second book in a series. Thank goodness I didn’t, because this was another great book!

Just a warning – this book is really gruesome. It’s pretty graphic in places. But that sure didn’t stop me from reading and enjoying it.

I did enjoy this book, but I will admit that I think the first book was better than this one. I felt like Kate made some stupid decisions based on her emotions that the case brought forward from her past. I could understand why she did those things, but it didn’t make it any smarter.

Overall, a good book that I enjoyed and I definitely recommend it.

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016, SERIES, Stone Barrington, U-V-W

Review: Swimming to Catalina by Stuart Woods

Tara

Swimming to Catalina
by Stuart Woods

Swimming to Catalina

Copyright: 1998

Pages: 391

Read: May 24 – 27, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Paperbackswap

 

 

Blurb: Stone Barrington thought he’d heard the last of former girlfriend Arrington after she’d left him to marry Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder. Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.

In a town where the sharks drive Bentleys and no one can be trusted, Stone soon discovers he’s drowning in a sea of empty clues that take him from Bel Air to Malibu to Rodeo Drive. Running out of time and leads, he needs to keep his head above water and find Arrington fast, or end up swimming with the fishes himself.

Review: This is the 4th in the Stone Barrington series. I’m not entirely sure why I keep coming back to these books, but I do. You see, Stone’s character irritates me. It seems to me he does nothing but jump into bed with every woman who crosses his path (two in this book alone…). I just don’t like that trait. I will say, though, that this particular installment didn’t have nearly as much sex as the previous book, Dead in the Water. This book dialed it back a notch and left me wanting to actually continue on with this series.

I personally felt like the storyline of this book was especially good. I found it much more interesting than the first three books. It was a fast paced book that I read in a few days’ time. I think what keeps drawing me to this series is really that they’re just fun, fast reads.

Overall, not a bad book and I look forward to continuing on with this series after this one.

5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, RATING, Read in 2016, Review Book, S

Review: Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Tara

Pretty Girls
by Karin Slaughter

Pretty Girls

Copyright: 2015

Pages: 573

Read: May 15 – 23, 2016

Rating: 5/5

Source: Publicist for Review

 

 

Blurb: It’s been more than twenty years since Claire and Lydia last spoke. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire; Lydia, a single mother dating an ex-con, struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the disappearance of their sister Julia two decades earlier – and the shocking murder of Claire’s husband brings the horror and heartbreak of the past roaring back into their lives.

The vanishing of a teenage girl and the killing of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: What could connect them? As they form a wary truce, the surviving sisters unearth the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago … and find the astonishing truth where they least expected it.

Review: Oh for the love of everything holy, this book is one hell of a ride! I read Julia’s story, Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes last year and loved it. So when I was given the opportunity to read this one, I knew I had to know what happened to Julia!

Let me just preface this with the fact that this book is gruesome. I mean, gruesome. It’s not for the faint of heart. That being said, I loved every deliciously disgusting moment of it! It sucked me in and spit me back out at the end. It was one heck of a ride. And can I just say that I was chugging along nicely and about the halfway mark the reader is thrown a curve ball that I never saw coming and hit me like a Mack truck. From that moment on I had to know what happened. I had to know how this ended up. It was just that good!

The characters are enjoyable, and some of them will surprise you in the end. You see a lot of growth in them throughout the book. You see a family torn apart come together. You see what a madman can do to one family. The plot is so intricate it’s amazing. Everything is woven together so perfectly. One little thing mentioned could mean something big later on in the book. It’s not a book to skim through, it’s one to devour. It’s just such a great book I don’t know how much more gushing I can possibly do.

This book will definitely be one of the best ones I read all year long. It was that good in my opinion.

Read. This. Book. Now!

**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.

4/5, AUTHOR, Author Debut, Book Review, C, Fiction, Rachel Knight, RATING, Read in 2016, SERIES

Review: Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark

Tara

Guilt by Association
by Marcia Clark

Guilt by Association

Copyright: 2011

Pages: 397

Read: May 4 – 14, 2016

Rating: 4/5

Source: Purchased new

 

 

Blurb: Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight is a tenacious, wisecracking, and fiercely intelligent prosecutor in the city’s most elite division. When her colleague Jake is found dead at a grisly crime scene, Rachel is shaken to the core. She must take over his toughest case: the assault on a young woman from a prominent family.

But Rachel can’t stop herself from also digging deeper into Jake’s death, a decision that will have her risking her reputation – and her life – to find the truth.

Thoughts: I first read Marcia Clark when I read The Competition a couple of years ago. That was in 2014 – why on earth did I wait two years before picking up the first Rachel Knight book?! I wish I had a decent answer for that question. But I don’t.

This book really hits the ground running. It sucked me in almost immediately and I found myself reading 50 pages in the blink of an eye. It was a really fun, interesting book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like Rachel’s character. She’s so down-to-earth and relatable. Rachel and Bailey are like two peas in a pod – they just mesh together so well as partners.

Being a backlist book, there’s not much I can say about this one that you haven’t read before. So – if you haven’t read anything by Marcia Clark yet, definitely give her a try! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I highly recommend this one!

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, F, RATING, Read in 2016, Review Book

Review: Dark Angel by Ron Felber

Tara

Dark Angel
by Ron Felber

Dark Angel

Copyright: 2016

Pages: 316

Read: April 29 – May 4, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Publicist for review

 

 

Blurb: Set on Princeton University Campus in a world where money is measured in billions and success by the control one wields over entire nations, readers will encounter a Nazi geneticist, a renegade CIA operative, a trans-human serial killer, and a Hollywood starlet as deadly as she is beautiful; all gathered together for a horrifying project: the creation of the Fourth Reich.

Review: When I was first pitched this book I was first really excited and then kind of unsure. Excited because I have read and enjoyed the earlier Jack Madson books, A Man of Indeterminate Value and The Kafka Society, and was really looking forward to the final book in the trilogy. Unsure because the description didn’t necessarily grab my attention. But I prefer closure when reading series books, so I took a chance on this one.

Overall I’m a little unsure how to approach this review. The book, while not bad in any way, shape, or form, was not what I felt like was a good fit for me as a reader. I found a lot of the subject matter nearly impossible to follow. I have a history degree and have a pretty good background in the historical aspects of the Hitler era. However, science is not my strong suit at all, and I struggled with a lot of the science aspects involved in this book. I found myself completely skipping over entire sections because it was almost incomprehensible for me and honestly, just not all that interesting to me.

There were a lot of good aspects to the book that kept me reading, though. Jack’s character is a tough one to describe. He has a lot of problems, but he also has a lot of heart. So while his constant drug and alcohol use is not a positive character trait, his dedication to justice makes me keep reading. He’s also given a love interest which adds another positive aspect to his character in this book – underneath everything, he’s got a big heart.

The book moves at a great pace, and honestly if it weren’t for the science aspects that I struggled with so much, this book would have been really great. However, if you’re a science and history junkie, I think you’ll enjoy this book. There’s definitely an audience out there for this book, unfortunately it just isn’t really me. However, I am glad that I read it and finished out the trilogy. (Although I felt like the ending kind of left it open for more Jack Madson…)

Bottom Line: A decent book, one with a character who may be flawed, but is a good man underneath all his issues, but I just didn’t feel like I was the target audience for this one.

**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, M, RATING, Read in 2016, Review Book

Review: The Girl From Home by Adam Mitzner

Tara

The Girl From Home
by Adam Mitzner

The Girl From Home

Copyright: 2016

Pages: 321

Read: April 1 – 11, 2016

Rating: 4/5

Source: Publicist for review

Blurb: Jonathan Caine is a true master of the universe – a currency wizard with a trophy wife, a penthouse condo with a view of the Statue of Liberty, and the desire for more -when his world comes crashing down. In the midst of this spiral, Jonathan returns to his hometown to care for his ailing father and attend his twenty-fifth high-school reunion, where he becomes reacquainted with former prom queen Jacqueline Williams. Back in the day, Jackie didn’t even know Jonathan existed, but now she is intrigued by the man he has become. Yet their budding relationship has problems, not the least of which is that Jackie doesn’t know the full truth about Jonathan, and she’s married to a jealous and abusive man. Jonathan is determined to learn from his mistakes, but is he capable of complete transformation? Or will a shocking temptation test his desire for redemption beyond anything he could have imagined?

Review: It was the pitch of this book that really brought me back to my blog. Having been given the opportunity to read Mr. Mitzner’s previous two books (A Case of Redemption and Losing Faith) I knew that I would not want to miss this one, so I accepted it for review and decided to come back to my blog 🙂

So what did I think about this book? Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, having absolutely no background in the financial world, I did have a little bit of trouble keeping up with what Jonathan was doing in the beginning. I’m sure Mr. Mitzner did  a lot of research to get it all right, but I was just a tad bit confused at times with the different aspects of that whole storyline.

 At first I didn’t like Jonathan’s character. In the beginning he’s just too superficial and completely obsessed with money. It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. And his wife, Natasha – she was even worse! Yuck! But as the book goes on and Jonathan comes home to take care of his father we definitely see a change in Jonathan’s character. Thankfully it’s a change for the better.

As the story progresses, we see Jonathan and Jackie reacquaint and you have to wonder how this is all going to turn out. The reader is given the sense that it’s definitely not going to work out as well as one would hope. And sure enough, that prediction is true. But it’s what happens in the last 20 or so pages that was really surprising to me. A twist came that I wasn’t expecting and that honestly, kind of upset me until the very last two pages when I realized exactly what was going on.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s just one more reason why I love Mr. Mitzner’s books so much. They are such fun, enjoyable reads! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.

AUTHOR, Book Review, D, Fiction, G, Mini Review, P, Read in 2015

3 Mini Reviews

Tara

Here’s something I’ve never done before … mini reviews.

I still have no blogging mojo. In fact, I’m typing this up quickly while my daughter screams fusses in her crib after only a 20 minute nap – momma needs more nap than that, darling!

So while I have little to no blogging mojo, I have been reading a bit. And I need to get these thoughts down before I forget everything.

So without further ado…..

Fates and Furies Title: Fates and Furies
Author: Lauren Groff
Read: Oct. 10-30, 2015
Pages: 392
Source: Book of the Month Club
Rating: 2/5

Thoughts:  This was my very first selection from the Book of the Month Club. To say that it was a disappointment would be the understatement of the year. To be completely honest, none of the October books really caught my eye, this one was just the one that seemed like it would be the most enjoyable for me. Oh how wrong I was on that! I struggled through this one. For 3 freaking weeks. I still don’t know why I bothered to finish it. I did not like it in the least. I can’t in good faith recommend this book, but hey, I’m sure someone out there would enjoy it … just not me.

Private BerlinTitle: Private Berlin
Author: James Patterson & Mark Sullivan
Read: Nov. 7-10, 2015
Pages: 448
Source: Paperbackswap
Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: I knew I had to have something fast paced after coming off of Fates and Furies, so of course I picked up a James Patterson book. Overall, I enjoyed this one relatively well. I think I prefer the Private books where Jack Morgan plays more of a role, but this one was still interesting. I can almost always rely on Mr. Patterson for a quick and enjoyable read, this one does not fail on that part. Recommended for sure.

 

 

 

The Alpine Advocate Title: The Alpine Advocate
Author: Mary Daheim
Read: Nov. 11-18, 2015
Pages: 240
Source: Paperbackswap
Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: What a cute little first in a series. Cozy mysteries are not usually my cup of tea, but for some reason this one really caught my eye and was an impulse order on Paperbackswap. I think a lot of the draw for me was the journalist/newspaper aspect of the storyline – I originally declared print journalism as my major in college. Anyway, like I said this was a cute little book. It kept my interest throughout. And I had no idea who the killer was until it was revealed at the end – I had missed all of the clues laid throughout the book. I am definitely looking forward to continuing this series in the future and would definitely recommend it!