Reading Fanatic Reviews
Books to Add to Your TBR list... or Not!Hey, ya’ll! I’m VERY behind getting my reviews up on the website! I’ve increased the reading and reviewing, leaving less of my leisure time available to update this website. I’ll do weekly posts with links to my reviews at Amazon; you can also check out my Amazon and Goodreads profiles.
By the way, I’m now a top 50 Amazon.com reviewer (#12 currently) and the top 8 US reviewer of all time on Goodreads (and top 9 in the world)… and the #6 US reviewer and #8 in the world in the past year. Cool stuff!
I hope to make updates to this site soon!
Irish Aisles are Smiling by Laura Dunham
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robinson
Irish Aisles are Smiling*
Fun Murder Mystery in Ireland
Wedding Belles, the wedding planning agency, is taking the show on the road to Ireland! This book had just the right amount of humor without being over the top. I visited Ireland some time ago, so I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of driving on the other side of the road. The author describes the settings well, enough that you can visualize the interesting places that the characters are at but not so much that you feel dragged it down by too much description. I quite enjoyed this book because the writer had the right balance of suspense, quirky characters, and humor.
The Ketogenic Diet for Beginners by Anivya Publishing
Available at Amazon only
Not with Kindle Unlimited
The Ketogenic Diet for Beginners*
Biased Information and Questionable Recipes
This book purports to be for beginners. I think it is more of a recipe book with a few short articles about the ketogenic diet itself. I found these articles to be heavily biased and light on fact. If you’re hoping to gain true information about this diet to help you better understand it, you would do better to look elsewhere.
The recipes are divided into three sections, breakfast and brunch (30), dinner ideas (31), and snack recipes (10). I have actually written cookbooks myself, so I tend to be a stickler when I look at the format of recipes and how they are laid out. In this cookbook, I definitely found some issues. Some titles are misleading. For instance, the coconut egg scramble, the second recipe in the breakfast section, would lead you to think that it has coconut in it from the title, but it only has coconut oil.
The ingredient lists are inconsistent; they don’t always follow the order in which the ingredients are used. Sometimes the preparation didn’t follow the ingredients when it needed to do so–you can’t have “1 diced bell pepper”; it should read “1 bell pepper, diced”. Sometimes a piece of information that wasn’t preparation followed the ingredient (like “12 strips bacon, organic cooked”). Sometimes the formatting of the directions wasn’t correct either. In at least one place, a paragraph was styled as a header, not as text. There are also issues in the entire book with grammar, punctuation, and usage. They were definitely issues with commas (especially not preceding a preparation method), spacing, and capitalization. This book needs an editor, one who specializes in cookbooks.
As to the recipes themselves, I thought some sounded interesting while others made me question the flavor profile. For instance, I can’t quite imagine a zucchini and coconut flake egg scramble. Some of the amounts of the ingredients in recipes is concerning. For example, the first omelet calls for three eggs but one entire bell pepper that’s been diced. It would seem that that recipe would be more of a bell pepper dish with a little bit of egg binding them than a true omelet.
If you have an interest in the ketogenic diet, I would suggest looking through the table of contents before deciding to purchase to see if these types of recipes would interest you.
Fudge and Murder by Maisy Morgan
Available at Amazon
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Fudge and Murder*
Slow-Moving Cozy Mystery
When the book opens, Grandma Mary and grandson Tripp are enjoying a relaxing weekend in a cabin owned by the parents of one of Tripp’s friends. At a swimming party later, one of the dads falls off the roof to his death. Is this simply an accident or has the man been murdered? Officer Preston will be leading the official investigation, but Mary and Tripp can’t help joining the investigation.
I enjoy cozy mysteries a lot. I will admit that I’m used to certain pacing and conventions in them. For instance, the murderer or foul play usually happens pretty quickly, usually within the first 8% to 10% of the book (and sometimes even sooner). That was not the case here. In this book, the man didn’t fall from the roof until around 27%. The time before that was spent showing Grandma and grandson’s evolving relationship as well as the newly forming relationship between the friend’s entire family and Mary and Tripp. I felt like I kept waiting for something to happen. I knew this was a cozy, I knew from the blurb that a murder was involved, so I felt like I kept turning pages waiting for the story to really start. The pacing of the rest of the book—the part after the murder—felt slow to me. Because so much time was taken before the murder, I didn’t feel like there is enough space left to build the suspense, throw in red herrings, and otherwise develop the normal plot devices needed in a mystery to keep you turning the pages.
Do As I Say by Mikaela Snowe
Available at Amazon only
Not with Kindle Unlimited
Do As I Say*
How Far Will She Go?
Justine’s world has just been turned on its head. Her boss at an online magazine, where she has a pretty cushy job, has just died, and the new boss is his grandson, who does not have such a laissez-faire approach. In fact, he’s giving her only two weeks to prove her worth to the magazine. To what lengths will Justine go keep her job? And what is she going to do about her attraction to the new boss?
I found the writing style of this hard to read. It read like Justine’s stream of consciousness, making it choppy and not wholly coherent at times. Lots of one-line paragraphs and short-phrase sentences broke it all up too much, not allowing for a cohesive flow of narrative. At times, also, I felt like the author was trying too hard to be funny, making many instances of potential humor fall flat. Justine’s head is not a comfortable place to be in on several counts, including the ones just mentioned. Also, she is very self-centered and takes little personal responsibility for her actions.
Rather than finding this a fun romantic comedy, I found this to be a disjointed work that was actually hard to read because the narrative flow–and the right amount and type of humor–just wasn’t there.
Black Hollow: It’s the Little Things by Robbie Cox
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, 24Symbols, Mondadori, and Angus & Ferguson
Black Hollow: It's the Little Things*
Magically Delicious!
Kerry has come to Black Hollow to find her sister. We first meet Kerry when she’s checking into the only inn in town. She believes the proprietor, Mr. Sandman, is pulling her leg about the rules of the establishment that have to do with the likes of banshees, brownies, sprites, and dragons! So you might imagine that she lets out a scream when she meets a leprechaun who can change from being three-feet tall—a leprechaun’s average height—to being a size that’s more normal in the outside world. The two team up to both find her sister and work on the mystery of who is stealing from the leprechaun bank, which is what her sister came there to help figure out.
Oh, my gosh! What an incredibly fun and magically delicious read (oh, yeah, I went there!). While I understand that Black Hollow is a series, this is the first installment that I’ve read, and seriously, it is a delight. The book is written with great humor, which is what makes it so much fun. In setting up the magical aspects of this world, the author employs dry, tongue-in-cheek humor that is just a pleasure to read. To the inhabitants of the town, their abnormal existence is entirely normal; the author plays this up well but then contrasts it with Kerry’s reaction to it.
As I said, this is the first book of the Black Hollow series that I’ve read, but it certainly will not be the last.
Llewellyn’s Little Book of Tarot by Barbara Moore
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robinson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Llewellyn's Little Book of Tarot*
Nuggets of Insight into the Tarot
This small book is a fun introduction that gets you thinking about tarot in different ways, whether you’re a novice or more experienced. Its structure is simple, much like you would believe, with early sections on the history of the tarot as well as structure and symbolism. The bulk of the book is about the cards themselves, a page for each, naturally divided into the major and minor arcana. The book ends with a section on how to do readings and layouts and is followed by one about other activities you can do with them. The book has a fantastic further reading section, listing both classic and newer books on tarot, where she not only gives the book title and author but also a sentence about the book’s topic. The table of contents is helpful because it gives the page numbers of all the different extra information in the book, like the tips, prompts, and exercises.
For each of the card pages, there is a picture from a contemporary tarot deck and keywords with a paragraph or two about the card in general followed by either an exercise, tarot tips, information about symbolism, or a journal prompt. Each page about a card ends with a line or two that will give you an instant answer if you use the book for bibliomancy, where you flip open to a random page of a book for an answer to a simple question. There are eight exercises altogether, including the bibliomancy mentioned above, figuring out your birth card, choosing a card of the day, journaling with tarot, and creating affirmations. There are 41 tarot tips scattered throughout the book. The topics range widely, as you might imagine from the number of them. Sometimes she talks about groups of cards, like the court cards; other times, she discusses working with the tarot, like what to do when cards are confusing or working with reversals (if you choose) and negative meanings. The symbolism tips sometimes focus on a very specific element in a specific card, like the Fool’s dog, or a specific card’s symbolism more in-depth. The symbolism of abstract notions like grief or justice is also addressed. The journal prompts are, as you might imagine, based on the particular card it is attached to, like mother issues for the Empress and rebirth for Judgment.
I really liked having exposure to so many contemporary tarot decks. While I own quite a few, as I’ve studied the tarot for over 30 years, I’m not as familiar with what’s currently available as I might be. Some of these decks are quite beautiful, and I might have to research a few to add to my collection. Having worked with the tarot for so long, I was surprised that this little book actually had me thinking about my work with the cards differently at times. Some concepts were wholly new to me, like using different decks for different types of questions or readings. I might have to try that. I liked her brief descriptions of the cards; it is clear the author has studied tarot wide and deep, and her viewpoint on it is very open and uplifting. I will definitely be incorporating some of her ideas into how I use my cards.
In all, I found this to be a delightful little book that will spark many an idea and insight into my work with the tarot.
The Six Gifts: Secrets by Christie Kelly
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
The Six Gifts: Secrets*
One Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery
We first meet three-year-old Olivia when she is being pulled from a pool after nearly drowning. She experiences white light and peace. The story flash-forwards to when Olivia’s in her 50s. Her marriage of 30 years is flat (and even slightly aggressive, with some swearing), and she is experiencing ill health due to chemical poisoning. When she finds out that her high school boyfriend has been killed in a car accident, she decides to drive back home for his funeral. While there, she experiences vivid dreams, reconnects with people in her past, and through a variety of means, gains more clarity of life.
The book weaves between the past and the present. Unfortunately, in the present sections, there are a lot of info dumps, first about her marriage and then about other parts of her past. I found these sections tedious to read. I appreciate that characters often have a huge back story, but I think such as better delivered in small drips and drops as the reader needs to know. The author does do a good job of setting place in Vermont and Colorado.
Negatives aside, I found this an interesting read depicting one woman’s journey to understand herself, both her past and where she wants to move to in the future.
Dear Time, Are You on My Side? by Ky-Lee Hanson
Available at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters).
Dear Time, Are You on My Side?*
Gets You Thinking Differently about Time
This amazing book will have you examining the concept of time from a variety of perspectives that will help give you clarity on your own relationship with time, how you can make it more fluid, and how the passage of time is immaterial to your wants and needs as you grow and mature within your own self, in your relationships, in what you choose to do, and in your purpose in life. The book creator has brought together 19 women with unique relationships and insights into time based on their own life experience. The book is divided into five sections: What is Time?, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number, Fear is a Time Robber, Heartbeat to Heartbeat, and Change the Course of Time. The end of each section has a place for you to reflect on all the concepts of the part as well as free journal; at the end of the book, you’re given space to rewrite your life from a new perspective on time.
Each of the authors shares a part of their own story, reflecting on time and what it has meant, means, and will mean to them. They talk about shifts in perspective and knowledge gained. Some of these are dense reads, while others are very straightforward to get through. I found all to be valuable, and each got me thinking. The exercises at the end of each section help anchor the concepts that have been discussed and give clarity on what they can mean to help you live your best life.
Here are some topics in the book: Living Timelessly–Ego and Time are Not our Enemies; Managing the Me in Time; But When is the Timing in Life Ever Right?; Life, Not According to Plan; The Wait is Over… Your Time is Now; and A Premature Lesson in the Value of Time.
If you find yourself grappling with issues of time, from time management to greater concepts like feeling like you’re running out of time because of your age, this book will give you a more in-depth perspective and a way to reframe the concept of time is so that we end the struggle with it and instead work with as we evolve on our road to becoming the best person we can be.
Robyn: A Christmas Bride by Jacqui Nelson
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Robin: A Christmas Bride*
Will It Be the Party of Her Dreams?
Robyn and Max have feelings for each other, but neither has revealed them. Robyn gets it into her head that Max would prefer her to be more ladylike; growing up with three brothers, she is more of a tomboy. So she enlists the aid of the brides of Noelle to help her become more ladylike in a just a few days before a special party at which she hopes to receive a marriage proposal. Robyn and Max had been living in Denver, but Robin went to Noelle for the special tutelage. Max does follow her, even though he’s sworn that he wouldn’t go back to Noelle.
The absolute highlights of this book are the crazy Llewellyn brothers with their silly, fun banter and Grandpa Gus. Another fun theme running throughout this book was of men knitting! I thought Max had a good character arc about him coming to grips with his feelings about the town of Noelle. While I did enjoy the snappy dialogue and the other concepts I just mentioned, I felt that Robyn’s motivations for change were weak, and the plot felt contrived with the idea of a 4-day time limit on Robyn’s transformation and the proposal. I also felt to that the conflict between the couple was a non-conflict; if either just could have said their true feelings—and the reasons for not doing so didn’t seem to be substantial enough—things could have been solved rather quickly.
That said, if you suspend your disbelief about the weak motivation and the contrived plot, you might find yourself just enjoying the banter and the quirky characters we’ve come to know and love in this series. Once I realized this was just a light piece of Christmas fluff, like a good Hallmark movie, I was content just to let the story unfold and enjoy the ride.
Cadence Defined by Dakota Willink
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Cadence Defined*
Will Cadence and Fitz Find Their HEA?
We’re now 17 years after the end of Cadence Untouched, the first book in this duet. We first meet Cadence in her role as the owner of a non-profit that helps DACA individuals. She is surprised when her daughter’s date for the prom—whom her daughter states is just a friend—reminds her of Fitz. When she finds out his last name, she figures out that the young man must be his son. While doing her regular run at a different place in the city, she actually runs into Fitz. She had already determined to tell her daughter, Kallie, about her father; she had previously spun a tale that she didn’t know who her father was. Now, what will she tell Fitz?
I feel that the pacing wasn’t quite right with this book. I fully expected Cadence to tell Fitz about Kallie early in the book, maybe at the end of the first act or at least by the midpoint, so that the both of the book would follow the aftermath of the revelation and them all, perhaps, working toward becoming a family. Instead, the bulk of the book seemed to be about the evolving relationship between Cadence and Fitz, without her having divulged that they had a child. This might have been okay (though I think it still should have happened by the midpoint) if Cadence had wrestled more often with whether (and when) she should tell him. She did now and then (and not often for long) and more towards the end when it looks like the secret may get out anyway, but there definitely should have been more persistent inner conflict for Cadence. I thought Fitz sometimes still thought, spoke, and acted a trifle immature for his age (39).
The author clearly has some very strong political views about DACA and immigration, and she made Cadence very passionate about these topics. This is fine, but at times the dialogue felt more like political proselytizing than real conversation, which I think is unfortunate.
The end, to me, felt like it came out of nowhere. We know that Fitz’s father is a nasty piece of work, but I wasn’t expecting his cruelty and the dramatic way in which he exited the story. Unfortunately, the book had more than the common issues with grammar, punctuation, and spelling. At times plurals and possessives were confused, like panty’s vs. panties or references to family members as a group (e.g., the Millers, not the Miller’s). Some sections in italics weren’t properly italicized, with some formatting shifts coming within sentences and even words. There were some issues on occasion with capitalization.
Oh, and the author totally messed up which Austen novel Elizabeth Bennet is from; that dear heroine is from Pride and Prejudice, not Sense and Sensibility! Supposedly, Fitz read some Regency and Gothic novels to make him feel closer to Cadence. (They did have a discussion about the novels in Book One.)
If the first book got you emotionally invested in Cadence and Fitz, you would most likely want to read about their second chance at love. If you haven’t, this book could be read as a stand-alone, but the flaws in it and the pacing issues may be enough to distract you from reaching the end.
Jamie Brydone-Jack
Reader, Editor, Writer
I’m an avid reader, for both fun and work/business. I enjoy a wide variety of books, including literary fiction, romance, thrillers, cozy mysteries, and fantasy for fiction and history, contemporary issues, philosophy, music, medicine, and cookbooks for nonfiction. I’m a freelance copyeditor who also does beta and alpha reading. I have two websites that are all about romance and mystery. You can also follow my reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, and Bookbub.
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