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!
Weddings & Weapons by Laina Turner
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Weddings & Weapons*
Murders in Wisconsin
Presley heads off to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, staying at one of her boutique client’s rental properties. She’s gotten a new manager at Silk, and even though Katy’s gone, Presley is able to take a little time off. She goes out to walk on the beach along Lake Michigan and what she thinks might be a big piece of driftwood is actually a dead body! Can’t she get some proper time off? She starts interacting with the locals and gets invited to a wedding. The bride discovers another dead body. What’s going on in this town? Will Presley be in danger.
I missed seeing Presley’s interactions with the familiar characters like Katy and Cooper, but it was fun to see Presley off on her own finding more trouble. I found myself wondering if the author is a Jane Austen fan, as the name of the militia compound was Wickham Place. I liked the slice-of-small-town life we get in this installment of the Presley Thurman Mystery series.
The Taboo Conversation by Dixie Maria Carlton
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
The Taboo Conversation*
It Isn’t Over Until It’s Over
How to start talking about the taboo conversation! This is a guide to dating, intimacy, and sex for women over 50. The author was inspired to do so after having a frank, impromptu, but fascinating discussion about sex with two women in their 60s and 70s. In this book, the author gives a ringing endorsement to all manner of intimacies as people approach later middle age and in old age itself. She first talks about attracting a mate and dating if you don’t already have a significant other. She touches on topics like cheating, body image as a woman ages, and protection. Then, as she says, she gets to the good stuff, the seduction and sex itself, whether you prefer vanilla or multiple flavors. She also doesn’t shy away from talking about potential problems and pitfalls and how to avoid or solve them. In most chapters, she touches on how sex and intimacy change as we age, mentally and physically.
The book feels like a conversation you would have with a more experienced girlfriend who knows a lot about and cares about sex. There are a few naughty words here, as you may expect, but surprisingly, not as many as you might think given the topic. But this is certainly not a book for prudes, as the author discusses all these topics openly and without hesitation. The book is a fun and sometimes enlightening read. I loved the quotes about sex and intimacy throughout the book as well as the random collection of fun facts at the end. More than one made me smile.
Spring’s Dragons: Withered Rose by Eva Brandt
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Spring's Dragons: Withered Rose*
Complexities in The Realm of Eternal Youth . . . and Beyond
In this first book of the Spring’s Vampire portion of the newly renamed Soulmates of the Seasons series, we first meet Queen Eiar—Eranthe (private name), Lady of Spring, and ruler of The Realm of Eternal Youth. This is a land that has unicorns and leprechauns; there is a dreamlike quality to Eranthe’s descriptions. Vampires are forbidden in the Land of Time, which encompasses all the realms of the seasons, because of some past wrong actions by their predecessors. So the queen is surprised to find three show up in her realm. What are there vampires doing there? What are their plans?
This queen comes across as more naïve than her sister Cassia, though—I have to say—the kitten does have some claws. She lives in a charmed world very different from The Realm of Eternal Ice. As in the Winter’s Dragons portion of this series, this book is narrated by both the queen and the men. Eranthe’s sections have a childlike quality to them, which is very different from Cassia’s in the earlier part of the series. The vampires come across much more forcefully and aren’t quite as distinct as I would have hoped. The dragon shifters in the Winter’s Dragons books definitely each had their own voice. We get to meet the queens’ mother for the first time in this book.
Even though I read all previous books in the series, I found this book to be confusing. There are lots of names of places and worlds (and most places and important people have two names), and these don’t use variants of common English spellings; they are unusual names, so they can be a little hard to wrap your mind around. There also seems to be a complicated history between these different worlds that isn’t fully spelled out, so you have a lot to keep straight in your head as you reading this. An added complexity is that many of the magical beings in this book actually come from the myths of different cultures, some of which are familiar and some of which are not. It’s a little taxing to keep track of and detracts from the enjoyment of the story. The author does have a small guide to the realms in the back of the book, listing the queens and the other essential characters and beings in each realm.
I enjoyed the Winter’s Dragon’s portion of the series more than I enjoyed this installment of the new next part of the series. I will still check out the next book and hope that I will get and keep my bearings better in it than I did in this one.
Big Heart Ventures by Tina Ruseva
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Big Heart Ventures*
Purpose Beyond Profit for Entrepreneurs
What are big-heart ventures? In this book, the author discusses the concept of purpose-driven entrepreneurship. What is this? The author defines it as a business with both effect and efficacy, meaning that it can add value for customers (thus allowing profitability) while keeping ethics and the bigger picture in mind (the heart part). She believes that a false dichotomy exists between for-profit and non-profit businesses. A purpose-driven business is profitable but not at the expense of long-term values, both on a personal and global level. She discusses this dichotomy, a little about the history of entrepreneurship, and goes on to detail what she means about purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
I think, in general, that her ideas are good ones. We definitely have seen lately, and throughout history, how businesses quite often do what we as consumers and humans considered to be reprehensible or unethical. Big companies have made recent headlines about how they’ve abused the trust we put in them to keep our data and privacy safe. As consumers, we would be able to trust businesses more if they weren’t just about the bottom line but saw the bigger picture and acted ethically.
The author is of Bulgarian descent and has spent much time living in Europe. It is clear that English is not her first language. Still, having chosen to write this book in English, she should have had it edited by a native English speaker. I am not sure if it was edited at all. There is definitely awkward phrasing, wrong words, and incorrect punctuation. This does distract some from reading, and therefore, from the message.
Bats & Bling by Laina Turner
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Bats & Bling*
Missing Brooch and Murder
Presley is happy to be providing a swanky gown for Veronica, a mover and shaker in town, for a charity Halloween event. Veronica is ready to dash off to dinner but doesn’t want to take the expensive brooch she brought to match to her gown with her, so she asked Presley to hold it for her in her safe. The next morning, the brooch is gone. Who has access to the safe? Was this some plan? Soon, though, there are more significant problems when Veronica turns up dead, and her husband disappears. Did he have something to do with it? Are the theft and her death linked?
Yet again we have another installment of this series without Cooper. I enjoy the books more when he is in them; he’s a great counterpoint to Presley. Katy is still in Chicago helping Presley run Silk. This book was shorter than the last two. I enjoyed the previous two because there were more elements to the mysteries involved in these longer works. This installment is relatively short, and the big murder doesn’t happen until close to the halfway point, not really giving enough time to develop the unraveling of the mystery. So compared to the previous couple of books, this was a disappointment. There are definitely some issues, too, with punctuation and grammar that were more noticeable here.
Still, if you enjoyed this series, you will most likely enjoy this one, even with its limitations.
Advertising, Branding & Marketing by Dixie Maria Carlton
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Advertising, Branding & Marketing*
May Help New Small Business Owner with Lack of Marketing Knowledge
This brief guide’s original subtitle suggests that it will help a small business owner make their branding, marketing, and advertising more effective. However, in my reading of it, I didn’t get the sense that this book was about effectiveness; the author must have agreed because the subtitle was changed to say that the book is a “quick and easy guide achieving great marketing outcomes in a small business.” I think both subtitles overstate what the book can offer. It is more like a rough sketch describing aspects of marketing including, but not limited to, branding and advertising. Some topics she touches on include targeting your market, positioning your business, customer service, networking, promotions, and online marketing. The author’s goal is to help you understand the basics of these so that you can grow your business through a good marketing plan.
Just to be clear, this guide is aimed at small business owners of actual brick-and-mortar establishments. While some information may be relevant to online businesses, it is mostly about local, walk-through-the-door businesses.
As I stated, this book is very short, just around 120 pages. So if you are looking for an in-depth discussion of the book’s topics, you won’t find that here. Within each topic, though, the author does provide definitions of key concepts as well as what the topic means to your business. Nearly every chapter could be a book itself. Some chapters are very short, positioning your business being only 5 pages and increasing your market share only 3!
Some ideas in this book seemed to harken back to business ideas that were more suited to business in the last millennium before the internet became such a prominent feature in our lives. I wonder at the efficacy print, TV, and radio advertising in the modern age where many get their news online and stream or read content that used to only be available through traditional media sources. I actually ran a brick-and-mortar small business in the early 2000s, and even back then, marketing and advertising were rapidly changing. While there is some mention of online marketing and social media in this book, it is a very small portion of the contents. I’m wondering at the relevance of some of what she talks about regarding advertising and promotion.
I think this book might be of value to a brick-and-mortar small business owner, or someone who is considering becoming one, so long as they understand its limitations in scope. The book gives a glimpse of critical factors that are important to the success of your business and does provide some idea of what needs to be done for each. Don’t expect to learn enough about, say, promotion or networking to fully execute a strategy. You will need to look elsewhere for more actionable ways to implement them.
Finding Claire by Barbra Dawson
Available at Amazon (KU), though the book is offered at Kobo, Mondadori, and Angus & Fergus for free.
The author may be planning to have Amazon price-match to these other sources.
Finding Claire*
Potentially Good Story Ruined by Bad Grammar and Punctuation
The book opens at Claire’s funeral. Soon, her son is given a box of diaries and other things of his mother’s that will help explain some questions the son has about her, his father states. The bulk of the book, except for a little at the beginning and the end, relates Claire’s later teenage life.
I had a problem with this book on a variety of levels. First, I didn’t really see the need to bracket Claire’s story with the modern context of having it seen through her son’s eyes after her death; this added nothing to the story as not much was done in either of the small modern-day portions. The end, especially, could have been so much more (and have been the reason for the modern parts) if he had some interaction with the young man mentioned in the diaries who was so pivotal in his mother’s early life. That would have made this modern-day bracketing make sense. But as that did not happen, it seems rather pointless.
Another odd thing I found about the book was that even though the son is supposedly reading these papers and diaries, the story itself is related as any regular story would be, with a fair amount of dialogue. I don’t know about you, but when I write in a diary or a journal, I don’t write dialogue! So, unless the son has an excellent and spot-on imagination, this isn’t actually a good representation of what supposedly happened with his mother.
The most significant issue I had, though, was that the book was poorly written from a grammar, punctuation, and usage standpoint. So much so that I was utterly distracted from reading the story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such terribly inconsistent and non-edited work in publication. I did receive an ARC of this book, so I double checked the Amazon preview to see if the final book had been edited before I wrote this portion of the review. The preview seems to be no different from the version that I read. The author appears to be British, but most of the rules of grammar and punctuation are the same between these two variants of English. She seemed to have no understanding whatsoever of how to punctuate dialogue, and there was a lot of conversation in this book. Capitalization is wrong, commas are wrong, and other random punctuation is thrown in around dialogue. Both in dialogue and narrative sections, sometimes ending punctuation is left out. Word choice was occasionally wrong, like bare vs. bear. It seemed hardly a paragraph went by without an error, making it so I could barely concentrate on the story.
The story itself about the coming of age of a young girl had its merits, but these were overshadowed by the structural problems of the book as well as the grammar, punctuation, and usage issues.
Dukes by the Dozen Collection, Various Authors
Available at Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Mondadori, and Angus & Robertson
Dukes by the Dozen*
Delicious Baker’s Dozen of Dukes!
Despite what the title says, you have more than a dozen Regency and Georgian Dukes in this collection. The authors have given us a baker’s dozen of dukes instead! The stories in this book are not full novels; instead, it is a collection of novellas written just for this collection, one for each month of the year plus an extra. The stories do correspond to the respective months and seasons.
For a collection about dukes, this book actually had a set of fascinating heroines. In the first three stories, one is a worldly but honorable highwayman, another is a sarcastic and snarky ruined young lady, and the last is a newly minted duchess who already has serious doubts about her husband. Familiar Regency and romance tropes are explored, like friends to lovers, second chance at love, small misunderstandings that cause significant problems, love between those of different stations, and falling for someone already betrothed. Several of the novellas make good use of letters. More than one book has Scottish flavor (and even a Scottish duke!). Most of the dukes are young, but some are older or have had war experience. For heat level, the stories range from clean to steamy.
I won’t go into detail about all the novellas, but I will share a little about a couple of my favorite ones. By the way, the stories did vary in the number of errors in grammar, punctuation, and usage. More than a few stories were problematic with commas and other punctuation. Collections, I think, need to be edited by one editor to help smooth out the entire set of stories so that these errors and differences can be mitigated, making for more pleasant reading.
Here are a couple of favorites:
February – The Difference One Duke Makes by Elizabeth Essex
This duke arrives on England’s shores some ten years after he left it to join the Navy. Now back with just one arm due to injuries sustained in war, he finds out as soon as he stepped ashore—very nearly–that he is now the duke as his brother has passed. At a soiree at a neighboring estate, he meets up with one of his old childhood playmates, blank, who is now considered to be a ruined woman because she was found alone with his brother. They have a delightful back and forth as they both hide out during this get-together. It is clear that both have held a tendre for each other for a long time. Will the duke wish to marry the girl he has loved for a long time? What will his mother say? Would the scandal be tolerable? I love this Duke! He was so unsure of himself in his new role and because of his injury. It was fantastic, too, that the heroine readily accepted him in a warm and friendly way and could see the wonderful man he still was. My only quibble with the book is that they constantly used their childhood nicknames for each other, which got a little tedious.
April – The Duke and the Spring Flowers by Grace Burrowes
This duke is told by the Earl of Falmouth that his father promised that he would pick his duchess from amongst his three daughters, who all happen to be named after flowers. The duke is not too pleased about this but is willing to meet them at social engagements to see if one would suit. What I liked about this story was the humor and the relationship between the sisters. The Duke as well is funny to watch as he reacts to the idea and the young women. This was one story that had me smiling.
This collection is diverse enough did I imagine that almost any reader who enjoys Regency or Georgian romance will find several stories to enjoy here.
Accessories & Alibis by Laina Turner
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Accessories & Alibis*
Proud New Entrepreneur…and Mysteries!
Solange’s husband is giving Presley ownership of Silk. Before the ink is even dry, one of the employees of Silk, Roxanne, is arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, Drew. Roxanne swears she is innocent and wants Presley’s help in clearing her name. All is not well at Silk either, as some merchandise has been ordered on the company accounts but doesn’t seem to exist. Also, Solange’s husband left out a little detail or two about the business’s financial state.
Did Roxanne kill her boyfriend? What will Presley find out? Will Silk be able to survive financially? Will Presley regret her decision to become a business owner?
I was sorry to see that Cooper didn’t feature heavily in this installment of the Presley Thurman Mystery series. At the end of the previous book, they had finally gotten back together after being on the outs for a while. In this book, he’s in New York working for a client. Katy still here in Chicago, supporting Presley as she starts her new business. I enjoy watching their friendship. This particular installment feels like a combination of mystery and chick lit, which is not a bad mash-up. I like how in the last two books the author has increased the complexity of the plot to include more mysteries than just one. This book isn’t just about Roxanne and Drew’s murder; it is also about mysterious happenings at Silk as well.
This book seems to have more issues with grammar, punctuation, and usage than some of the other books in the series, which is unfortunate as I do enjoy reading about Presley’s happenings.
If you’ve enjoyed the previous mysteries in this series and the quirky cast of characters that always seemed to surround Presley, you may enjoy this book. By the way, if you are new to the series, the author does a good job setting up the world by telling you a little about some of the previous mysteries as they relate to Presley and her friends currently.
Heart of the Storm by Jane Thornley
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Heart of the Storm*
Feisty Heroine Refuses to Be Victim
Emma, daughter of a wealthy man who runs a merchant ship trade, is not pleased with her father’s choice for her betrothed. She is sailing to Nova Scotia with the ultimate goal being Williamsburg in the colonies, where her betrothed will be taking on a new post. All of her plans are upended when she discovers her affianced dead.
Soon, Emma finds out that she is part of a much greater scheme against both her late betrothed and her father. Lord Jack Winston is set on revenge because something of value was taken by the dead man. He has commandeered one of Emma’s father ships and plans to seek treasure if only he can find the map that was taken from him.
Will Jack find the treasure map, and ultimately the treasure? What will he do with Emma? How will Emma react to now being held hostage? What will her future without her betrothed hold?
The book is written in a style that is different from most 18th- and 19th-century historical romance novels. There are parts that are a little tongue-in-cheek or with wry humor or even a little slapstick. Some of the writing had phrasing that felt a little awkward, hampering complete enjoyment of this sometimes zany and steamy story. Emma is a fierce heroine; she will not willingly play the role of victim that the men would like her to. Yet, this intrigues Lord Winston, and he soon finds himself in an internal battle between what he has planned and his growing feelings for the lady. At times, I found Lord Winston to be the gentleman he was brought up to be, but other times he succumbed to his baser instincts, both in word and action.
I like it that the author made the secondary characters three dimensional. Dottie is portrayed as a lady’s maid who is still rough around the edges as she struggles to speak and act properly and whom Emma is still trying to train properly. The captain tries to keep Lord Winston on track with the original mission in a very colorful and fun-to-watch way.
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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