Tag Archive: romance



A Witch's Magic: A Love Triangle With a Magical Twist (Heart of a Witch Book 2)A Witch’s Magic: A Love Triangle With a Magical Twist by H.T. Night

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Can I give a three and a half star rating? I loved the first book, but this one so left me flat. The first dealt with the power of a blooming witch trying to decide between good and black magic and the decision that needed to be made between her two great guys. Unfortunately, book two was more of the same angst. Nothing got resolved.

I was happy to hang out with old friends. I had grown to really like the characters, even the not so good ones. But I got very frustrated without any progress being made in this book. In the first book, there were even bits of seemingly real information about how to find your center and power. Not much was in this one.

AND I might have been happy just hanging with the friends as I mentioned before, but the book needed more editing. There were places I had to reread sentences to make sense of things. A word left out or not the right word. A sentence of present tense mixed in with mostly past.

Even still, I can’t wait to read the next book.

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TaxiTaxi by Sophia DeLuna

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Too short! But that is what I always say after reading a short story. It was just right for that time just before bed when I’ve just finished reading longer books. You know, not ready to go to sleep yet, and not wanting to get involved in another longer book. I hate when I start to read something and can’t remember the next day what I read so I have to start over. With a short story, you have the whole sweet tale to sleep on. So I guess I shouldn’t hate them. BUT I always want to know what happens next!

What is nice about this story is getting to be in another country in a taxi. You get to know the driver quite well during the story and learn about the passenger a bit. It was a fun read. I just wish the author, Sophia DeLuna would flesh it out into a full sized book. There is a lot here she could work with!

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Beneath the MaskBeneath the Mask by Margaret McGaffey Fisk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t read ‘romance’ novels. Not if I can help it. But I consider Margaret McGaffey Fisk to be my friend so I felt I should try. I knew I couldn’t go wrong with her writing. I don’t think I saw a passive sentence anywhere in the book. This reading comes close after I read of Pride and Prejudice. If this were to be a contest, this would win heads down!

Passion is what wins it for me. No! Not that kind of passion! I mean the passion this young girl had pursued since she was small. But, now that she was to be presented as a woman… She wants to dance, something frowned upon back in those days.

Dawn Hyde, narrator of the Audible version of the book made this book so beautiful! Her accents and voice changes helped keep the characters separated and unique. I look forward to reading more with her voice.

Okay, for the romanticohics, there is romance in the end, but most of it is this girl coming of age and her trying to live out her passions, somehow. It makes me sad to know women of the past weren’t encouraged to follow their hearts and passions. When I start feeling like we’ve made no forward motion in the feminist movement, reading something like this shows we have made some progress.

I am looking forward to more by Margaret McGaffey Fisk!

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Witch to ChooseWitch to Choose by H.T. Night

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I just had to slap my hands and get tough with myself. I am three reviews behind my reading! The problem right now is that I already had book two of this series and I didn’t stop reading to do my own writing. Bad Dar, bad Dar!

And look at this! I didn’t know that this author was a male! So I have to give kudos fo his writing. With my goal of the last couple years to read mostly books written by women with strong female main characters, and aiming for the Bechdel test awareness, this book nearly slid right by. I think it was around the third chapter that I had to stop and look up this author. Women talking to each other and not about the male characters, realistic feelings coming from all of the people in the story. Men who cry. Women with power! Wow! H.T. Night, I am proud of you! And I plan to read more by you.

Oh, and look at this: NO CLIFFHANGER! It ended nicely yet I just wanted to see what happened next.

Now I am not a Wiccan and have only studied a tiny amount. So it felt believable…all except the person who is a warlock. I have heard that men are witches, too. Aren’t warlocks dark magicks? If anyone wants to educate me on that I would be happy to know.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Night has a plethora of books out there with vampires and wolves and all. I may have to stretch our my reading chops and finally include those bitie creatures. Now more reviews to do before I can read more!

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Spirit Binder (The Cascadian Chronicles #1)Spirit Binder by Meghan Ciana Doidge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love BookRooster.com! I have discovered so many gems this way. Books I might not have been able to afford or wouldn’t have known about otherwise. I have nearly one hundred books on my queue starting way back in 2013. This one came to me about that long ago. Yes, I am slow to read all they send me, but they don’t seem to mind my ADD of books.

For a while, I only read my BookRoosters on my Moon Reader Pro. Now I find I can send by email to my Kindles. I love MRP because I can read and listen on the same device. But with the emailed one, I can make sure to get the books sent to my tablet or any of my Kindles. Sure, I have to listen on the older Kindle while reading it on my tablet or Fire, but it reminds me to read it more quickly as I can see readily all the books I have waiting my eyes on the carousel.

Now for the book itself. Spirit Binder feels to me an Epic Fantasy as there is magic, and swords involved. Not my favorite genre of fantasy, but, with the main character a strong female, I felt more inclined to get involved in the story. I know there are those who LOVE Tolkien. Not me. Too many warring men. Just not my kind of story. Theo is gusty and smart. Though the book starts with her at a disadvantage, having forgotten the last ten years of her life, she claims back her own bit by bit with all the love and power she can–and that’s quite a lot!

Luckily, BookRooster sent me book two so I can follow up in the near future. How cool is that?

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Five Minutes in HeavenFive Minutes in Heaven by Lisa Alther

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a ride! Not exactly rollercoaster, but not merry-go-round either. From the beginning, I like the main character, Jude. She is one who doesn’t belong in the world, but finds her way, anyway. She is flawed and confused, with good reasons. I wanted to root for her to win each of her obstacles.

From Tennessee to New York to France and back, Jude struggles with her demons, longing for love to return to her as pure as she put it out. Rarely does it find her. Mostly because of her own insecurities and lack of role-models, love floats out as a fantasy. Never to be achieved.

I picked this version of the book up from Amazon, Kindle Unlimited (which is in fact limited, as you can only have ten ‘checked out’ at a time). I kind of wished I had the Audible version or the Whispersync to go along, but I managed okay without.

My biggest complaint is the French. Not the people. Just the use of the language with no definitions available to the reader. If you only took Latin, Spanish and German in your language classes, French isn’t a language you even have books for. At least that’s how it is in my house. So I had to ignore the language and hoped to get the gist. I hate when authors do that to the reader. It stinks of a superiority to the reader. It wasn’t necessary. If you are conveying a story to the reader. and most of the book is in English, why not continue in that language in the last third of the book?

And the ending? Wish I had been given a grown up, matured, version of Jude when she comes home at last! The last part ended in the same way, that the other two sections had ended. Wondering what next. Still, it was worth the read.

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Special Offers (Coursodon Dimension, #1)Special Offers by M.L. Ryan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked up this fun book through BookCrossing dot com. I put off reading it for a long, long time. Why? The title and the cover. Even the blurb didn’t make me want to read it. But I am so glad I finally did!

It is only vaguely about Special Offers. What it is is a humorous paranormal story. When I started reading it I couldn’t stop. I needed something light to read as my husband was in the hospital and I was in the middle of a fibro-flare. So I couldn’t be at the hospital with him. Instead, I started this book. What a joy!

The characters M.L. Ryan invented were wonderful. Haily, the main character, is quirky and fun. She isn’t a hopeless romantic, she is practical and has a sharp wit. That romance happens in the deal is felt as rather coincidental. The rest is quite the adventure!

Even though I picked this up from BookCrossing, I want you to know it is free for Kindle on Amazon right now. I recommend it for adults, as there are a couple scenes that might be too racy for young adults. I picked up another copy so I could read it in my other readers when I feel the need of the fun ride again.

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The Exemeus (The Exemeus, #1)The Exemeus by Folami Morris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this e-book about two years ago from BookRooster.com I’m glad I finally gave it a shot. This was a fun ride.

It starts in a dystopian future when a nerd, forever the recipient of the wedgies and other tricks of the bullies. It doesn’t take long to like this kid. In spite of himself, he is a smart yet patient young man.

Without going into spoilers… hmmm…how to do this? Well, he ends up with a journal that his mother kept back in our days. Through this and a few other happenings, we see how much he is like his mother and we watched his magic bloom.

Well, that didn’t give anything away, but it doesn’t seem all that exciting. But it was! I really loved the characters, even the bad guys. They were all well fleshed out. The plot was an interesting take on the dried up meme of dystopia.

When I get new books that aren’t from Amazon I usually download them to my Moon Reader Pro where I can read along with text-to-speech. That way I don’t need a light like I do for my older generation Kindles. MRP is backlit like the Kindle app on my Tablet or on the Fire. It was a very fast read. I was sucked in right from the beginning and didn’t want to let it go until the end. Sleep and other needs got in the way of the read.

There is to be a book two. I can’t wait to read it. I didn’t feel this book left me with a cliffhanger. We know how THOSE bug me! I guess the only reason I didn’t give it five stars is because there were places that I felt there were holes in the story, that things had been left out with little segue between parts. I managed to pick up the threads but felt unnerved by how it was done.

By the way, It is now $.99 on Amazon for the Kindle version. Not bad for a great bit of entertainment!

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Time and Time AgainTime and Time Again by Dennis Danvers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This read took me a long, long time! The font was so small and the lines too close, so I had to take it a couple pages at a time.

Maybe it was the length of time it took me to read it that played into my occasional confusion as to whose head I was supposed to be in. I’ll accept that reason but still, there were other places that I knew I wasn’t confused. For a book that contains news of today, news of a century ago, a journal by Susanna, and a book being written by another woman, main character, Marion Mead… were all written by male author, Dennis Danvers.

Sorry, most of the time I didn’t buy it. I believe Dennis Danvers tried. The writing was good and for the most part I loved the main character. But what was irritating for me were male traits imposed onto the Susanna and Marion.

For the last couple years, I have made it a habit to read books that could fall into the Bechdel test. My own addition, in the case of writing, is that the book be written and star a strong fem. The only reason for this read was this is a BookCrossing hardback that has been in my TBR pile for a too long.

Okay for the nitty-gritty. Susanna’s journal was about the men in her life and how they interact with each other. It even went inside the males heads: this one likes to be plowed hard and fast–or something along those lines. Yeah. Most of the time, we prefer foreplay–please?

I know, this did include the mores of the past where women had no minds of their own as they belong to their fathers or husbands and other than that were old maids or whores. That probably made it easier to write from a woman’s point of view. But even when we were in Marion’s POV there was nothing but male-centric. Sure she had her daughters, and of course she looked like Mary Magdalene. Then finally we had a conversation between Marion and her co-worker, and even that was a conversation about sex with the male.

Oh, off the track a little, one of the reasons I wanted to read this from the beginning was I thought it was about time travel. Nope. Instead, it was more reincarnation. Hope that isn’t a spoiler. But that was part of the well done parts.

Most people wouldn’t notice the picky stuff I I saw. And so I think others will like it better than I did. It certainly was different.

By the way, this is BookCrossing BCID: 046-5591579. I will send it to other people of my group before setting it free.

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Pride and PrejudicePride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To my English teachers and friends who have raved that I should read this. Check. Done! My grade for this book is a C- and that was with the help of Carolyn Seymour, the narrator. Glad I read it so I could say I did, but I was not wowed like others.

I couldn’t have gotten into it as a tree book, even on Kindle with text-to-speech I couldn’t get there. Though the reader did add a lot to the experience, in the beginning, I’m afraid there was no help.

The first half of the book seemed centered around bickering, gossip, and how women of the time could climb the status ladder. Ms. Seymour’s varied voices just made that part even more irritating. I felt sorry for the reader as there was no way to vary the voices enough within that family of females. Lizzy and Jane’s father was probably easy to do. And the voice of Darcy felt unique. But other than those voices, I couldn’t tell whose voice belonged to whom.

As for the book itself, I felt that the real book started about 3/4 in. That’s where it all started to get exciting. I suddenly cared for a few people. It may be that the passive voice that seems to live in most so-called classics that made this less than wonderful. I plan to watch a couple versions of the movie next. Then there are possible book two by more recent authors. And… I’m not done with Jane Austen. I do plan to read them all, somehow. After all, these follow my main goal of reading books by females with strong female leads.

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