Tag Archive: Fiction



Clarity 2: Clarity, Book 2Clarity 2: Clarity, Book 2 by Loretta Lost
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Don’t get me wrong. This book was good. But I HATE cliffhangers. I forgave book one. But this one was way worse. The world is a mess right now. I don’t need the angst. I am quitting on this series. If you are rich enough to get all the series, enjoy. Luckily, enough of the answers are given in the blurbs, so you don’t have to continue buying to find out if it works out. But NO book is worth this nervous energy,

Still, I raised the star rating to two stars because the writing was well done. And the narrator, Elise Arsenault,  did a marvelous job of acting out the characters.

Trigger warnings are all over, from rape and abuse at the top of the list. But I don’t feel the character who is supposed to help is helpful in the long run. So, read at your own risk.

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Clarity (Clarity, #1)Clarity by Loretta Lost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reaching to the bottom of my currently-reading shelf I found this at 79.

Look straight up, I will warn you. The main character is blind and experiences a rape. So you will have to decide for yourself if this is something you can handle. The author covers the situation with all her senses, as she does with the rest of the book. Though I didn’t like the rape, the next bits of the story are quite interesting.

Elise Arsenault narrated the Audible version I listened to. Her voice is a great addition to the story.

Now I have to say what I didn’t like. Say it with me? Cliffhanger! The worst! Good thing it happened at night with me awake enough to want to read more. I often don’t buy the next if that’s how the authors do it. Somehow, I moved on and am reading book two. But I feel violated when an author does that!

Still, I do like the main character and how she chooses to live her life. And I do want to read more.

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Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love both Earthseed #1 and #2. Octavia E. Butler gives us all something to think about. It doesn’t matter if you believe the Earthseed theories. The story holds its own as people try to survive in a world unlike ours, enough to make it nearly unbelievable. And yet. Take a moment to think, what if? What would you do living from the survivor’s point of view?

I miss the narrators Patricia R. Floyd, Peter Jay Fernandez, and Sisi Aisha Johnson of both this book and the previous one. I highly recommend this Audiobook if you can find it.

What I like about this book and such stories as The Walking Dead (which this is NOTHING like) is the human factor and how people choose their leaders and beliefs and judge others from their own standards.

I may read these books again soon. I miss the story already. Don’t you hate it when a story affects you so deeply that you can’t breathe without it happening in your head?

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Pardonable Lies (Maisie Dobbs, #3)Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my favorite Maisie Dobbs mystery yet. The addition of Orlaugh Cassidy as narrator brought this story to life. Also, the author brought more depth to Maisie Dobbs. Her past resurfaces, and her life is in constant danger.

Ms. Dobbs travels in this book. That’s where a narrator who can speak dialects and other languages comes in. I can’t imagine reading this with Kindle Text-to-Speech. Or even visually, as Orlaugh Cassidy helps you feel like you are watching the movie. The France trips were a great experience.

All the Maisie Dobbs are fun so far. Jacqueline Winspear puts a lot of research into her books to help readers feel they have fallen into that era and place.

Libby had this audiobook to loan. I am so happy to be able to read these books.

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Cold Comfort FarmCold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Need a laugh? Here’s a fun book. I didn’t get it at first. When I realized it was supposed to be funny, I grinned for most of the book. It is British humor, my favorite.

I had been reading the Maisie Dobbs series, so I expected a serious mystery or something.

This review isn’t working. Here’s the blurb from GoodReads:
When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex.

At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years.

But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

I hear there’s a movie. I’ll have to look that up. I picked this edition up from Libby. I think it might have been even better as an audiobook.

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Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs, #1)Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My friend Kay recommended this series. She’s right. These are fun and engaging.

This first installment came from Libby and was in Kindle form. That meant that I could listen to it with text-to-speech. Since I have my Fire set to a British female voice (think Mary Poppins), it fits quite nicely with this story.

War is a horrid thing. This particular war in England and Europe was one of the worst. Yet, for women, it became a way to escape the housewife, childbearer, whore classification most women were forced into. With the men fighting, the jobs were open for women to learn and show their abilities. Sadly, when the men came home, most of the women lost that step up to being wholly human.

Some women did find careers to move on. Maisie Dobbs is one of the ones it worked for.

This first book lays the groundwork for Maisie’s history and sets up the world she’s in. She’s a woman of spirit that can solve mysteries and make friends with all classes of people.

I have already started book two. I am in for the ride!

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Scourge and Seed (Thalassic, #0-0.5)Scourge and Seed by Liz Shipton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Don’t you just love a back story about how the bad guy started out as a human? That’s what you get here—the back story to a few of the main characters of the Thalassic series. As book zero, this prequel shows you everyone’s start.

I found this one quite interesting. And now I feel I hold the whole story. So, it all started with a pandemic. And it all leads to the apocalypse and post-apocalypse. And as with all sci-fi disasters, you hope, like heck, the stories are not prophetic.

As far as I can tell, this is the last book of the series, though it could be read as book one, I suppose. I’ve already put Liz Shipton’s next book on pre-order. I think it comes in April.

I think most of these are on Kindle Unlimited. I loved all of them. I miss the world and the characters who became as close as friends in my mind. Try them out.

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Savage (Thalassic)Savage by Liz Shipton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“I’d rather be a savage with you…than be civilized on my own.”

Jameson Briggs grew up in a savage world.

A survivor of the pandemic. An orphan at twelve. A brilliant poet, bullied for his words. A cutthroat pirate, ruthlessly hunted.

But when a disastrous shipwreck leaves him stranded in a foreign city, Jameson finds himself starting over in a world that is savage in a whole new way. Political maneuvering. Deception. Wealth. Beautiful women.

Beautiful dangerous women.

Like Zahara and Petra – daughters of the city’s most powerful CEO and heirs to a tech fortune. As Jameson grows closer to their family, his world spirals and he is drawn into a tangled web of lies and corruption. Jameson must will he rise above it?

Or will he become a savage?

This is a standalone origin story for the villain in the Thalassic Series. You DO NOT need to have read the series before you read it! In fact, this makes a nice entry point to the series. It is a spicy, enemies-to-lovers, forbidden-love romance between a morally-gray pirate and rich man’s daughter. In it, you’ll find the following

– Touch her and die
– Villain gets the girl
– Fish-out-of-water
– Found family
– Badass women
– Love triangle
– Pirates
– Dystopian world
– Plot twists
– Fast-paced, high-stakes adventure
– More snarky banter than you ever thought possible.

TRIGGER This book contains cheating. This guy is a villain. He is morally gray (and it is a pretty dark shade of gray.)

~~~
That is the blurb, as I found it hard to come up with something to say about this prequel. I was happy to read it, but how to describe it? I lost my words. I’m still a big fan of the Thalassic series and hope you find it fun, too. Now, on to the last written in the series.

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Prologue (Thalassic, #6)Prologue by Liz Shipton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This continues Paz’s story, and though it starts out with him in a bad place, he comes around to being the person I loved from the beginning of this series.

And once again, the exploration and adventure take over. I loved this addition to the series. There are two more little books about folks of this series. I can’t wait to fill in the missing pieces, Liz Shipton, author, supplies us.

I can’t wait to get started on what’s next.

By the way, did I mention these are all on Kindle Unlimited? Enjoy!

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Passage (Thalassic, #5)Passage by Liz Shipton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I hate to admit that I got confused between ‘Paz’ and ‘Passage’ about what happened in which book. I read them both in one night. So what I said for Paz can go here, too.

[These are] the least favorite of this series. I understand the need to view from another character than Bird. It is her friend turned lover, Sargo’s point of view. But sadly, he isn’t as perfect as we thought in previous books.

[And now Paz is falling for Johnny. Our lead man is confused on so many levels. We all get there sometimes. The best fictional characters show a lot of flaws and confusion.]

Another thing I didn’t like was all the fighting with or without weapons. I love visiting all the alternate dimensions, but the good guy and bad guy stuff was hard to take. And though the sex scenes before were fun, now it got weird, and with drugs involved, especially from the drug-free anchor partner, it just made Sargo even less appealing to me.

Still, as part of the series, I felt this part of the story needed to be told. And I’ve already moved on to #6! There is still a lot of interesting adventure to be had here.

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