Book Reviews

Croc’s Return (Bitten Point #1) By: Eve Langlais

Crocs Return

Croc’s Return (Bitten Point #1) By: Eve Langlais

Plot:

Coming home doesn’t always solve things … but it does pave the way for second chances. Take one deadly bite and, bam, a man’s life is changed forever, or so Caleb discovers when a loss of control leads to him joining the military and leaving everything behind. Time goes by … years spent silent and alone, cut off from those he loves. Until it’s time to come back, a scarred veteran, in many ways broken and looking for a meaning to his life. Perhaps it’s not too late to right some wrongs. Make amends. Kiss a certain pair of sweet lips one more time. If only Renny would damned well let him. It doesn’t take Caleb long to realize Renny’s just the thing this croc needs to bring him back to life. Yet, what if he loses control again? He doesn’t want to take nibbling on her thighs to a whole new level. Too bad, he can’t stay away, especially not when he discovers her secret. Add in a strange creature stalking the townsfolk and there is no way he’s leaving her alone. Years ago it just about killed him to leave, but Caleb’s a changed man now. A darker kind of animal, and this retired soldier is ready to kill so he can stay. Welcome to Bitten Point, where the swamp doesn’t just keep its secrets, it sometimes eats them.

Review:

I was a little emotionally raw when I read this, leftover from Sweep in Peace, and I ended up crying more than this book probably warranted.

Caleb is a returning soldier that dealt with the evil from the Kodiak Point books. He’s scared in more ways than one and ready to put his life back together. Of course things are never that easy.

Lots of reveals and a new evil to fight, I’m excited to see what comes next.

4/5

Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles #2) By: Ilona Andrews

Sweep in Peace

Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles #2) By: Ilona Andrews

Plot:

Dina DeMille doesn’t run your typical Bed and Breakfast. Her inn defies laws of physics, her fluffy dog is secretly a monster, and the only paying guest is a former Galactic tyrant with a price on her head. But the inn needs guests to thrive, and guests have been scarce, so when an Arbitrator shows up at Dina’s door and asks her to host a peace summit between three warring species, she jumps on the chance.

Unfortunately, for Dina, keeping the peace between Space Vampires, the Hope-Crushing Horde, and the devious Merchants of Baha-char is much easier said than done. On top of keeping her guests from murdering each other, she must find a chef, remodel the inn…and risk everything, even her life, to save the man she might fall in love with. But then it’s all in the day’s work for an Innkeeper…

Review:

I honestly think what really pushed me to read this series was knowing that some of the characters I liked in the Edge Series made an appearance. George, Jack, and Lark are all grown up and they still very much have their issues.

Still this is Dina’s story and even though I liked the Edge character’s appearance, I preferred her part in everything. She’s like a patch of light in the middle of a lot of darkness, but when she realizes she’s being played she doesn’t pitch a fit or mope she took care of business.

Fair warning, I cried a lot while reading this. A lot. Freaked my family out.

Really hope there’s another book and I probably won’t be able to stop myself from reading it on Andrew’s website.

5/5

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1) By: Ilona Andrews

Clean Sweep

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1) By: Ilona Andrews

Plot:

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is…different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, “normal” is a bit of a stretch for Dina. And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night….Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.

Review:

I waited a while before reading this Ilona Andrews book. I knew, at the time, that she was posting it in chapters on her website, but I chose to wait until it was done. Then I kind of forgot about it until the second book was published as well. Wow, was not expecting this.

Clean Sweep is a supernatural/Sci-Fi mix and I love it! I can understand why this wasn’t published traditionally because it’s probably a hard sell, but I’m so glad they found a way to get it out there.

Dina is a great heroine, she’s smart and capable but not overpowered. Her Inn is just as interesting. She is also, not like I feared, anything like Kate Daniels. She is very much a new character.

Loved the world that was created and teased, since it was a shorter book there wasn’t as much as I would like, but there was still a fair amount of info. Really looking forward to the next book and I’m already sad there’s only one more.

5/5

 

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) By: Marissa Meyer

Winter

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) By: Marissa Meyer

Plot:

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

Review:

I had no idea how she was going to wrap everything up in just this book, but Meyer managed to do it and I don’t feel left wanting. Well—I would have preferred an epilogue more like from Harry Potter, but I understand why she did what she did and I’m fine with it.

So much happened in this book, so much, and there were like fifty characters to manage, but I never forgot who was who or got lost or confused. It was over eight hundred pages of shit going down.

Worlds were changed and romances were kind of taken care of. Actually, that might be my least favorite part about the Lunar Chronicles, apart from Cinder (book 1 not the character) romance takes a back seat to politics and worlds stuff. It’s there in every book, but it’s not the driving force. It’s a nice change for a fairy tale re-telling, but I just wish there’d been a little bit more.

Overall, the series was awesome and this book was a satisfying conclusion so I’m happy.

5/5

Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath #1) By: Chuck Wendig

star-wars-aftermath-625x951

Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath #1) By: Chuck Wendig

Plot:

Journey to The Force Awakens.

The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor and his powerful enforcer, Darth Vader, are rumored to be dead. The Galactic Empire is in chaos.

Across the galaxy, some systems celebrate, while in others Imperial factions tighten their grip. Optimism and fear reign side by side.

And while the Rebel Alliance engages the fractured forces of the Empire, a lone Rebel scout uncovers a secret Imperial meeting…

Review:

So I’m a fan of Chuck Wendig’s blog, if he hadn’t written this book I probably still would have read it, but I might not have been as excited for it. I’ve read a couple of his books and I’ve enjoyed them, but they weren’t a genre I read much and they were darker and more depressing than I like. Aftermath was dark but I always had hope, which is what I like about Star Wars. Bad stuff happens, but there’s always hope.

Reading this made me feel like I was in the Star Wars universe, a diverse more realistic Star Wars universe. There were just as many female characters as there were male, which I greatly appreciated. The lingo was spot on for me and I could see the world that was created being right at home in the galaxy, though apparently some superfans had some issues.

I loved Norra, so freakin much. She was a mother but she was an amazing pilot. She made hard decisions, decisions I don’t know if I could make, and she accepted the consequences of them.

It’s actually a tossup who I loved the most, Norra or Jas the female bounty hunter. Honestly I was just happy to see some very capable female characters that were likeable but not perfect. Whenever you complain about the lack of female characters in Star Wars people are like, there’s Leia and Padme. Yeah, two characters with any screen time. Two. The fact that Aftermath had a proportionate number of women to men was refreshing and I would expect nothing less from Wendig.

I ended up purchasing the book after an epic quest across multiple stores because I didn’t want to wait for Amazon to ship the book and me to get it probably beat all to hell. However, I did read some reviews on Amazon and I was amazed at the amount of hate for this book.

Some people hated the fact that it was written in present tense. I can understand not liking it for that reason, it was a style choice by Wendig and I thought that it made the situations more urgent, but it did take me a few chapters to get use too. That didn’t make me hate the book, though.

Other people hated it because it completely wiped out cannon that they had spent years loving and analyzing. Not Wendig’s fault, if you have to hate on someone for that hate on Disney, otherwise get your panties out of knot and get over it.

The real assholes hated it because they felt it was pushing some kind of homosexual agenda. There was a gay character, but the amount of word space used on his sexual preference didn’t fill a paragraph. Temmin had lesbian aunts that were in the book for maybe a chapter, and the fact that they liked to get all up in each other’s vaginas was not talked about. There was also an instance where an orphan mentioned seeing his father’s die in front of him. Those are the only mentions I can remember and they were tiny. I do not see that as pushing an agenda, so if that offended you enough to write a scathing review, I think it says more about you than the book.

I really enjoyed Aftermath and thought it was a great addition to a galaxy I love. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy and I hope Wendig doesn’t kill off any of the characters I now love.

4.5/5