First, I want to say that I totally understand that I have no idea what it is like to write a whole book. It must be monumentally difficult. And it is infinitely easier to criticize rather than attempt to write a book one’s self. But try as I might, I just didn’t find this latest Netgalley offering to my taste.
In the Wick of Time by Valona Jones is listed on Random House’s website as “Part of Magic Candle Shop Mystery”. I
t had all the great things I like about mysteries: cool cover that implies there is magical mayhem involved, a play on words title, and even a categorization as both a magical mystery but a cozy. I admit, however, when requesting it from Netglley I didn’t realize it was book 2. But ok, I have done that before – and oftentimes then went back and read the earlier books – so it didn’t seem like that big a deal once I realized that. And I love a good easy read which most “cozy mysteries” are. So I eagerly dug in.
It wasn’t long before I realized three things: (1) book one likely would have been helpful; (2) there was both too much and not enough going on at the same time here; and (3) I really didn’t like most of the characters and the plot really needed some help. In cozy mysteries, there is typically a good bit of investigating. Not so much here. Most of the time there was talk about investigating, but besides one small B&E into the dead guy’s house and a trip for Tabby to visit her boyfriend in the morgue where she overheard a conversation, there was way more complaining about being swamped with work and investigating than there was investigating.
There also was no real establishment of the rules of this universe. And there is a fair bit that seems inconsistent. Does Tabby’s boyfriend know she is magic? Not sure. There are conversations where it seems like he must be but there are also conversations (and one at the end in particular) where is seems like he isn’t. Tabby and Sage talk about magic openly with the cops and others so easily but they don’t have boyfriends that know the details? And as for the magic that they have… heck if I know what it actually is or what the rules are.
There wasn’t really even an attempt at an establishment of the rules of this universe. Hoping that folks who have read book one have that background because it isn’t here. I know that it sometimes is hard to provide the right amount of background information so as to not bore readers who have read the prior installment(s) of a series, but in cozy-land, since they are typically stand alone mysteries just sharing repeating setting and characters, it is important to make sure to fill in the new readers if they pick up in the middle. And here that wasn’t really done. In fact, I had to read the first few pages more than one to make sure I knew who was who and to figure out as much as I could. For example, late in the book one of the twins notes that they can’t be aware from their street for too long. Why? I have no idea. It wasn’t explained.
The mystery itself was really silly too. It didn’t even feel like a real attempt to get a decent motive. No spoilers here in a review pre-publication make it hard to explain more about that but let’s just say that my fist thought when the baddie was revealed was “Whaaaaat? Really, that leads to this guys murder?”
And then we have Sage and Tabby. Honestly, not two of the most likable characters. Sage is whiny and selfish and just mean a lot of the time. And no matter how often you tell me that Sage is good with plants, it won’t make me like her. Tabby? I got more detail about soap and candle making than of any real plot or investigation on her part. Even the dialogue between them was old. One interaction started with Sage being angry and red faced and snapping at Tabby and then next moment Tabby behaving like the victim of domestic abuse and excusing it and being fine with it.
Tabby might have created some great new scent for candles and soap in the book, but this is one wick that wasn’t for me.
p.s. To Whomever Came Up With the Title: there should be some connection between the story and the pun… there was nothing resembling “In the Nick of Time” here really – by the time we get to the big reveal it doesn’t count because cozy mysteries always have a close call for the investigator. Better title next time. Although the cover was cute.
A teaspoon of absentee parents, a tablespoon of being someone different than what you were raised to believe, a cup of an adult figure not telling you everything, 6 cups of taking off and doing all sorts of stuff without bothering to tell your parental figure where you are, a few mysterious dread, a bit of paranormal surprise and a cliffhanger ending. Bake at 350 for a few hours and viola, you have your self the typical paranormal YA. But, most of these that I have read lately all have a romantic element, and here, the closest we get are some weird feelings towards someone Viv (our main protagonist, adopted, witch) sees in her dreams. Although at least she herself is skeptical of these feelings.
story progressed, I became pretty enamored with the story. The pace picked up and the writing improved over the course of the few hundred pages. My opinion grew enough that I was fairly annoyed to reach the end and have so many loose ends, those both directly placed in front of me and those subtly hinted at (Savannah, where are you?).
books are also YA and colder than Lynburn. Jolie Wilkins is 
your typical girl didn’t know she was a witch, man comes to rescue her from that boring normal non-magical life. She is destined to be queen or something like that and save the world. Cue the sexual tension, love story, bad guys wanting to take over the world, blah blah blah. Not terribly unique or original, but a fun little escape just the same.
destined mate, a Vampire prince. In 2 she finds herself in Hell with a cast of characters too weird to do justice to: Mother Nature (her Grandmother), Satan (her Uncle), God (another Uncle), Dixie (cousin), Seven Deadly Sins (all more cousins), Mister Rogers, Hemingway, and others. And we discover **spoiler alert** she is “Compassion”, a True Immortal. In 3 Dixie is sent to Earth to find herself of something like that. And she meets and falls in love with the Angel of Death. In 4, Astrid’s baby with crazy growing power and all sorts of magic turns out to be the most powerful Immortal ever. And there are Fairies with names like The Kevin (with “The” being the mark of an old fairy), trolls, demons, and all sorts of other craziness going on. Another fun little romp, with some steam, if you can get past that there are moments when it felt like the author was trying to do too much with the vampire, demons, family tree thing. And don’t, like I did, be expecting the Rogues that were such an issue in book 1 to really mean anything in 2 through 4, they just don’t really ever turn into anything that matters.
It is a little hard to consider some of the “good guys” good. Lillian, while on the same side as our young adult 
protagonists is such a snotty bitch, who has delusions of grandeur, and wants to rule the town is just not quite as loathsome as Rob who wants a sacrifice of blood but otherwise feels exactly the same way. And, some of the plot holes were hard for me to deal with. That said, I love the relationship between Kami and the other young folks the story is really about. And the connection between Jared and Kami and the complication that Ash becomes was great. There are really some sad moments on the pages of Untold. And there are a TON of unanswered questions, that I hope get answered in the final book, Unmade (which I will be starting tonight). I will note that of all the 15 books I have neglected to write reviews on, this one, to me had the highest “can’t-put-it-down” rating. I will note, however, that I liked the cover for the first book, Unspoken (seen on the left), better and like the cover of Unmade even less. And, the short stories for this series – get them free or don’t bother. They don’t really add to the story and they, in some cases, are super short.
save him – but there were enough differences and enough of the stuff I like to make this quick little read enjoyable. My primary critique – that I would love to have had a little more depth to the characters, so that I would feel like I got to know them a little better.
by Aaron Galvin from Netgalley, I will post the description that made me do the downloading:
(or perhaps precisely because of that fact). And, I am reminded on a great quote from the ever wonderful Agent Kay: ” A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it”. And that is what is described here – not once, but twice as we see the events of Sarah’s present day and the events of Salem through a journal Sarah is reading. It is well done too. The author gets just the right amount of facts in front of the characters in each parallel event and the mob mentality takes over, without any logic or reason peeping their head up for even a quick look around. Instead, both have their heads buried firmly, and far, into the ground and events spiral out of control until lots of people are dead. I would like to say that in the world we live in today that could never happen, but it happens more often today with the ability for anyone to push information, on a mass scale, regardless of the truth of it. So, it was interesting to see the parallels between the Trials and what Sarah faces and what society is facing on a near daily basis, across so many aspects of society today. I won’t name any so as to keep this review apolitical, but I conjured many analogies in my mind as I read this book. But, there are a number of excellent lessons here in history repeating itself as well as society’s inability to think rationally at certain times. Even the title, to me, seems to represent multiple things: Hecate’s vengeance, Bishop’s vengeance, Sarah’s once **spoiler alert, highlight to read it**
who inflicted the damage upon Salem. It is also the telling of a vicious and evil plan to hunt down and kill others. Darkness is required to pull that off without it seeming comical or melodramatic. I could picture the creepy woods and the tiny little colonial town. The ability to conjure those images with the right amount of sinister-ness was something the author excelled at. I found it easy to form the mental pictures of the forest and the witches dancing around their priestess. And I didn’t feel like the images were from some horror spoof. The author found the perfect balance – I was fearful for the fate of Sarah and her siblings but wasn’t creeped out or rolling my eyes that it was overdone. Again, it was near perfect.
was… frustrating. Yes, that’s probably the best description for about three-quarters of this Dulcie adventure. Downright stupid fits not quite the other quarter. Because there is a dash of revolting thrown in that absolutely must be accounted for. Revolting. Yes, that is correct. You aren’t reading a typo or a misstatement. But I will get to that in a few.
Dulcie seemed like a pretty cool girl in the first book. And she was even better in the second. The third book didn’t add to her coolness factor, but it didn’t detract either. This one, however? Oh my goodness is she a blubbering idiot. She is delusional, whiney, self-contradictory (at one point she thinks that she never gave up fighting to get out of her situation, but caving to each and every demand and command isn’t exactly fighting) and she becomes so irritating. Not to mention the story itself – her lies and that Knight knew but was lying too and all the manufactured drama/stress because both characters are liars… well, I can only take so much of that internal struggle from our “heroine” before it gets old. Really, really old. Like ancient Babylonian times, Noah’s Ark kind of old.
This element of the pace makes him look like a tortoise. A man who is supposed to have been a master criminal and all around tyrant for at least a hundred years can’t take a few days or weeks to give his new plant time to get settled and work through a workable solution? Tosh! Poor planning on the author’s part if you ask me.
isn’t smart (ok, always not just often – but this is where the couple’s struggle to be together, the he’s too good for me, I am too damaged, I can’t… comes from) and that tension or obstacle is necessary to the plot. When done right, it makes the steamy scenes steamier and the happy endings happier. When done right, the reader gets to sigh a sigh of relief that the characters have coupled and beaten what-ever was keeping them apart. But when done wrong, the characters are stupid, whiny, self-centered annoying reflections, with the emotional range of a teaspoon. But the teaspoon is Nicky Ferrante compared to Dulcie. While her libido puts Charlie Harper to
shame – as absolutely all reason and any teeny tiny sense of intelligence disappears instantly every time Dulcie gets too close to Knight since she automatically stops thinking even semi-coherent thoughts about anything other than lust. Dulcie is the poster child for Lust. And it became really tedious and boring in this installment. Especially given the revolting – and unfortunately, her inability to do anything other than lust after Knight, while being self contradictory in the same thoughts doesn’t appear solved even at the end of book 5.
Yep. He does. Just like that. He is all over Dulcie, she is telling him no repeatedly, and he reads her body language and decides that she doesn’t mean no when she says it, she really means yes. So he forces himself on her. It doesn’t matter that she eventually says ok – it never should have gotten that far with these characters. I have read books with rape elements or scenes. And typically there is a reason for the scene. Here – I think the author just flipped her lid. And, the way the characters handled the situation subsequently, made me ill. I had to put the book down and re-read a number of times to make sure I really read what I thought I did. (Compounding this is the fact that in the following book, which I will review in the next few days, the author even does some victim shaming. That too was revolting.) And the larger lesson of it’s not the victim’s fault and no means no, no matter what (I counted 6 times she explicitly said no or stop or don’t do this and a number of others where she had that thought) and that rape isn’t the same as passionate sex (which is one of the explanations for the whole thing later) and that no man can read the mind or in this case body of another to change no to consent. Never mind that she eventually, begrudgingly, says she wants to have sex – since it is after he has already penetrated her. His response at one point to why he is forcing himself on her is “because I can.” WTF??? Let that sink in. Is my revulsion misplaced? The more I think about it, the more revolted I am. And the more disappointed in the author I am (especially after reading Malice in Wonderland, by the way… but I won’t spoil that one in this review).
Or, the execution might be flawless, but the consumer still hates it because that person has his/her own personal tastes. And if one hates it, others might love it. Or vice-versa. This is true with food, music, art and yes, books. I sometimes gander at reviews written by others when deciding what to read next. While I tend to take suggestions from friends or folks I know share my tastes more seriously, I sometimes need some third-party sources to help me find what to read next. I knew I was going to read Great Hexpectations by H.P. Mallory. But exactly when I got around to it, and if I read something else first, was totally influenced by reading a few reviews of the books on the top of my “to-be-read” stacks (since I have a 
number of them). I realized when looking through the goodreads reviews that there is such a huge disparity out there when it came to this book and its quality. It has happened plenty of times: I totally fall for a book (or series) and others think it is less appetizing than Hilly finds Minnie’s chocolate pie (if you’ve seen the movie, you know which pie I am talking about…). And it happens with books in all sorts of genres and those written by a range of authors – both established and new – critically acclaimed and not. Although critically acclaimed is also relative since critics too are people whose views are subjective and influenced by all sorts of things – so I don’t put too much stock in “critically acclaimed” as a result. This book, of this series, struck me as a particularly good example of this duality – tons of 5 stars and tons of 1 stars. It was such a love-it-or-hate-it response.
Not to mention, it did the job. It was an escape from the day-to-day of reality. As a lawyer by day, mother by day and night, martial artist/instructor by hobby, there is so much seriousness in my life already. I often find my colleagues look down at my reading choices because they aren’t haughty enough. You know, I am not reading the so-and-so non-fiction NY Times #1 book about the most depressing human rights whatever…. zzzzzzzzzzzz……. I read enough big words in my day job. I handle enough serious issues every day at work that when I read, I want to escape reality and laugh and smile and not have to think too hard or much about what I have just read. Great Hexpectations, like the first two Dulcie books, squarely fit that purpose. And I am enormously grateful for that.
just glad that the next installments (books 5 and 6 anyway) are already published so I can pick them right up and I don’t need to wait for what happens next. Yes, the twist/cliffhanger didn’t require a CIA analyst to figure it out or predict it. But, it didn’t feel like a sure thing either. Marvin’s failure to blow up Earth with his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator was a guaranteed. Everyone knows that Bugs will spoil his plans – we know that from the moment we first see Marvin. But the only thing I felt was as inevitable as Bug’s saving of Earth was that Knight would someone end up freed. So, it was enough suspense for me to keep things interesting.
Tale of Two Goblins by H.P. Mallory presents me with quite a dilemma : how to classify this series. Some call the series urban fantasy (I hate that genre by the way… a lot of the stuff lumped in there was PNR, and nice and steamy PNR at that, until this new “urban fantasy” classification came along and spoiled all that good fun and turned off the hot water. Like the stories and authors are too good for those scenes. I blame Fifty Shades of Crap for that – good authors don’t want their stuff thought of as the same type of crap. That’s just my guess. Anyone know of a better reason, let me know and I will happily retract what I just said. But for now, that’s my conspiracy theory du jour). Some call it paranormal romance. Some, urban fantasy paranormal. I kind of like the goodreads list called is Magical Chick Lit. Personally, it reminds me of the cozy mystery.
bunch of H.P. Mallory’s other stuff (including Dulcie #2). With fingers crossed that they would all be as cute and as much fun. I am so glad I did – this didn’t disappoint. In fact, I think this was probably even an improvement over the first.
Book Series Tracker 