SAY NO MORE by Karen Rose

 

Publisher:      Penguin
Published:      August 22, 2020
ISBN:      ‎ 978-1984805300
Genre:     Suspense, Women’s Fiction
Format:     Ebook from Publisher
Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina  myreviewbooks@aol.com

TWO HEARTS                                                             

After escaping the Eden cult as a child and more recently a serial killer Mercy Callahan has settled in New Orleans with her extended family. She’s made friends and built a life for herself but has pleasant memories of the man who risked his life to save her from the serial killer, Rafe Sokolov. There is also unfinished business with her brother, Gideon, who escaped Eden years before. There are things she kept from him, like their step siblings, and then some but the time has come to open those doors to Gideon. Along with her friend, Farrah, they leave for Sacramento.  Upon their arrival Mercy’s world once again begins to crumble when one of the men from Eden, her husband, is there to meet her. But this is not a reunion she wants. In fact, it is more her worst nightmare.

Disappointing. Sadly disappointing.  I loved the first book in Karen Rose’s Sacramento series, SAY YOUR SORRY.  That was one of the best serial killer themed books I’ve read and I couldn’t wait for SAY NO MORE to come out. I’m in several online book clubs and raved about it to not only my in person friends, but in all my clubs, even the Vintage mysteries.  I started SAY NO MORE as soon as I got it and the first chapter was a white knuckle page turner. After that it went south for me.  I put it aside thinking it might be me. Over the past year I picked it up, sometimes re-reading that intense first chapter, sometimes picking up where I left off and it just wasn’t doing it for me. With the arrival of her latest in this series, SAY GOODBYE I knew it was time to sit down and get this one read. It was, as I said, disappointing.

It seemed like each character was having their own personal pity party. The Sokolov family, who I adored in SAY YOUR SORRY started to sound like a bunch of teenagers running around trying to solve a crime. Jeff, the actual teenager, seemed to have it more together than the adults at times. I get it that there’s a nasty cult and a psychopathic killer, but it seemed like every character had some kind of issue they were dealing with and if they started out not having one, they got one when Ephraim killed someone they knew.  And Ephraim wasn’t a serial killer….he just killed everyone he met.

It’s been my experience that when it comes to series either book 2 or 3, sometimes 4, doesn’t measure up.  I saw it recently in Jeffrey B. Burton’s the Keepers and S.A. Lelchuck’s One Got Away where the first books in their series were major page turners and book 2 was just meh.  I’ll pick up the third books in their series to see if it’s the author or if just a book 2 event. Since I already have SAY GOODBYE I’m going to hope this is just a stumble in Rose’s otherwise stellar writing and the series will pick up. 

 

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

 

 

*

WITHOUT SANCTION by Don Bentley

 

Publisher:      Berkley
Published:      March 3, 2020
ISBN:      978-1984805119
Genre:     Thriller, Suspense
Format:     Print from Publisher
Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina  myreviewbooks@aol.com

TWO HEARTS

                                                                   

Matt Drake, is a former Army Ranger and now, an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. But the “job” has gotten to him. He sees a dead woman when he looks at his wife and the image of a dead child is always in the back of his mind. He’s moved out of his home, telling his wife that he’s on a mission.  When an operative that is an informant for the agency has key information he needs to pass on he insists he will only deal with Matt.  When Matt refuses to answer phone calls his boss sends a team of FBI agents to the airport Matt waits at every day just to see his wife pass by in the hopes that today he’ll be all right and go home.  But he’s not ready to, even when the FBI agents handcuff him to drag him back.  After a major fight Matt is taken in and meets with his boss.  He reluctantly agrees to undertake the mission, but there are other forces and actors in play because of a pending presidential election and the politics around it.  Can Matt get in and get out with his informant before not only are they both killed, but a deadly contagion let loose on an unsuspecting world?

 

When I read the blurb for Don Bentley’s debut, WITHOUT SANCTION I just had to pick it up.  It sounded like the kind of suspense/thriller I love to read and imagined myself with a sleepless night or two while I sat up reading. I was, sadly, disappointed.

 

I’d say WITHOUT SANCTION is totally a guy’s book.  There are cut to the chase scenes that do just that—cut to the chase.  But with virtually every character being somehow broken or suffering physically, mentally and/or emotionally, it also read a bit like a women’s fiction where the “good woman” just has to go in and fix the broken guy.  Some of the political drama could have been a lot better.  And really?  The FBI sends people to airports to make them come to work? It just wasn’t believable. 

 

Maybe there is just too much sadness, illness and drama in our every day world these days that reading about people struggling just to make it through the day didn’t work for me.  I don’t mind a broken hero, or one that is struggling to get through some stuff….but when your first fifty pages are nothing but a guy who is angry at the world, lying and hiding from his wife who presumably took him for better or worse, and two other guys who have been physically disabled by war with no one being remotely okay, it’s a bit much.

 

 

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

 

 

 

VENDETTA ROAD by Christine Feehan

A Torpedo Ink Novel, Book 3

Berkley

January 28^th, 2020

978-1-9848-0356-6

Romantic Thriller Romance

Mass Market Paperback

Reviewed by Dawn (love2read28@gmail.com)

Obtained by Publisher

2 Hearts

 

Isaak ‘Ice’ Koval is part of the Torpedo Ink Motorcycle club and is on a mission for the club when he spies a woman who stops him in his tracks. Soleil is innocent, sweet and he wants her with every fiber of his being. Soleil Brodeur is a woman on the run, drifting from one thing to the next and when she tries to take charge of her life, she finds danger in a broken relationship that sends her fleeing into the night. Finding Ice at a Vegas biker bar, she finds a man worth loving and safety but she has no idea what she has gotten herself into for when Ice claims her as his, he will protect her with all that he can.

Okay first off I want to make a point of mentioning that I haven’t read this author’s books in years as it felt like she was just taking same type of characters and plots and just dumping them in another story with different names, etc. I got bored so I decided after several years of not reading her books to see if this one can keep my attention. All I can say is with me trying to give it a chance, VENDETTA ROAD, just made me cringe and I could not finish this at all. Too much sex, not enough plot and characters that had me cringing in horror as they moved along the pages of the story. With each page I turned, I really wanted to just toss the book aside and scrub myself off in the shower. I felt like the characters were just there to move along the sex scenes and not the storyline at all. Plus, the graphicness of the abuse and child sex trafficking portion of the plot left me cold and ready to scramble under the covers to hide. I wasn’t sure what the author was trying to convey with that, but it turned me off on more than one occasion as I stumbled my way through VENDETTA ROAD.

Christine Feehan is a talented author and I used to enjoy her books but lately it has felt like she is writing just for form and to see how much sex she can pack into a book plus she missed the boat in regards to fleshing out the con artist storyline that interested me far more than the sex scenes. This was not a comfortable read whatsoever and I felt like I had to stop reading midway just to find a light, happy book to enjoy after trying this one. I am sure others may disagree with me, but VENDETTA ROAD is dark, borders on porn and has no plot at all. I enjoy sex in books as much as the next one but with pages upon pages of it, in graphic detail, unfortunately turned me off and I won’t pick this one up again to finish it. It just did not keep my interest and with characters as flat as these, I am not bothering trying any other by this author unfortunately. It’s a shame because this book had promise but the author just wasted it.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement

THE REAL LIDDY JAMES by Anne-Marie Casey

Publisher:     G.P. Putnam's Sons

Published:    September 20, 2016

ISBN:        978-0399160226

Genre:       Women’s Fiction  

Format:     Print

Obtained via:  Publisher  

Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina  Ginalrmreviews@gmail.com

TWO HEARTS

 

Liddy James has it all. A fast track career as one of New York’s most successful lawyers, a supportive husband, adorable child.  What more could she want?  Bit by bit it seems that having it all equates with happiness—because maybe it’s all an illusion. Is she really in love with her husband, Peter?  And her child, the one she wanted so much…well is one child fulfilling her?  And the job? Well, maybe she’s ready for a new challenge that turns out to be one Peter doesn’t want.  And then one day her world falls apart. It begins with a bite of food going down the wrong pipe and the man who saves her life looks to save her in so many more ways.

When I read the blurb for Anne-Marie Casey’s THE REAL LIDDY JAMES I was immediately drawn in.  A high powered attorney, published author and mother of two juggling it all in one successful package.  Maybe I set my bar too high but it was a struggle to get through this one.  The story is primarily told, not show.  It is pretty much straight narrative about Liddy did this, Liddy did that.  If she felt anything I didn’t get it from the narrative or her own words.  I never warmed up to her, her husband, her husband’s new partner, Rose or any other character.  By time she goes to Ireland, 2/3 into the book, I didn’t much care if she got it together or not.

There were a few scenes that were entertaining and I found myself smiling.  I did enjoy the court room scenes and the parts where there was legal negotiating. 

Casey does have a different voice.  She narrates really well—it’s just not my cup of tea.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

WILLOW SPRINGS by Toni Blake

Publisher:     Avon       

Published:     June 26, 2012

ISBN:        978-0062024619

Genre:       Contemporary Romance, Young Adult

Format:     Print

Obtained via:  Publisher  

Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina  Ginalrmreviews@gmail.com

TWO HEARTS

 

Amy Bright has long been the go-to girl of Destiny when someone needs a smile, a hug or just to feel good about life.  She’s stood by her friends, held their hands when they were sad, laughed when they were happy and done a fair share of match making about town.  Her cozy book store, Under the Covers houses more than books—lately quite a few stray cats have turned up and Amy has found them homes.  On the brink of becoming the spinster cat lady of Destiny, for the most part, Amy is okay with her life.  That is until one night she shares a toe curling kiss with her life-long friend, Logan Whittaker.

Logan’s always been there for his friends.  A fire fighter he has rescued them in more ways than one, including being the guy who has helped Amy rescue her kitty, Knightley from his forays up a tree.  But the one time he is unable to bring about a rescue, he is devastated and falls into a depression that even has Amy worried about him.  On the heels of that rescue gone wrong, his good friend Mike’s long lost sister, Anna returns to town.  Was that toe curling kiss with Amy true love?  Or is Anna the one for him.

I’ve enjoyed pretty much all of Toni Blake’s Destiny series books.  They follow a pattern of starting out with a fairly innocuous situation, such as Amy’s cat Knightley being in the tree, go into a kind of “fluff” phase and then deal with a difficult, life altering situation.  In those situations Blake takes her readers into the character’s experience—which is true to life in terms of the subject matter.  In past books she’s dealt with a kidnapping and the suffering a family goes through, a character struggling with Crones disease and in WILLOW SPRINGS, PTSD.  She paints a realistic picture of the struggle and takes the character to a healing place with compassion.  Unfortunately for me, in WILLOW SPRINGS, much of that compassion was buried under the “mean girl” love triangle created by Anna’s return.  Until the very end I didn’t feel very much compassion for Anna—and in part that was because of how Logan was developed.  There were words about him being a player, but I didn’t see it. 

And Anna’s own conflict – finding her family after twenty years—just didn’t ring true.  She shows up in town, gets the hots for Logan and makes a play for him—but except for a few words on her part, nothing of her struggle to accept her real family was raised.  The parents pop into town for a couple of days and go on their way?  No counselling? No big welcome home party?  No news media coverage that a kidnapped child was returned? Granted, this is fiction, but a little reality would not have been amiss.

Like all of the books in this series the women seem a little pre-occupied about sex—and yes, it IS a romance.  However rather than thirty-something women they seem more like high school girls.  For the most part the stories, and particularly WILLOW SPRINGS is more of a young adult than a contemporary romance.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.