Callum and Harper by Fisher Amelie

Callum & Harper by Fisher Amelie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The issues that made this book a one star read:

One-dimensional wish-fulfillment heroine. Harper was unflawed, perfect, so gorgeous that all of the men who encountered her immediately fell in love with her.

Seriously awkward writing, which causes disasters like this sentence: "Callum was as selfless a man could be and in a world where an attribute of that caliber was more rare than a pink diamond, I clutched him tightly to my heart, fully aware of just how priceless he undoubtedly was." The next time Ms. Amelie writes a book, she should put down the thesaurus. Because that sentence is INSANE, and it is one of many that are just as awful.

Totally unrealistic financial situations: in what world do two completely unskilled, homeless, and unemployed high school graduates in NYC manage to earn 5K in two weeks by grabbing odd jobs? Whether the author can do the math or not, I can. This is $1200 a week, which is a whopping 62K a year per character. Why would anyone ever get a college education or a job if they could make more than the average teacher by washing dishes under the table on an ad hoc basis. Let's not even talk about the ridiculous "wedding" that a bunch of (basically) strangers threw for our H & h, on their own dime, for no other reason than that they were pretty

Random tense changes within the same sentence, which led to this:  "Heat coursed through my arm and when he removes his hand, I felt a lacking I'd never known I could possess."

WARNING: THIS PART IS SPOILERIFIC

Two freaking years of being fake married. Two freaking years of being fake married. Two freaking years of being fake married. Yes, seriously. Totally in love with each other, yet living together in an unconsummated marriage for two years, afraid to admit their feelings for each other. I could've believed six months, but two years of unrequited, yearning, celibacy is just completely unrealistic and absurd.

Finally, as the piece de resistance, beautiful Harper is stalked by a serial killer who is also a former foster kid, in a story line that really just devolves this book into farce. He burns down their apartment. He murders a bunch of women who either share her name, her address, her hair color, or some other attribute, and when the police finally catch him after he nearly murders her in a library, they are so in-fucking-competent that he escapes by bashing one of them on the head and running away. And then, instead of issuing an APB for him, he blithely boards a plane with Harper and kidnaps her on her way to Seattle so she can confess her love to Callum. Then he hauls her all over Seattle, makes her dress up and pretend to love him, and then nearly beats her death. While she is hospitalized, he conveniently throws himself from a pier and his body washes up as she recuperates.

END SPOILERS

Ack.

When I bought this book, I was hoping for a simple, cute story about a pair of foster kids growing up and falling in love. What I got was a poorly written, unrealistic, absurd, wish-fulfillment, nonsense-filled pseudo-crime-drama.

Easy by Tammara Webber

Easy by Tammara Webber


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Tammara Webber consistently writes and publishes books that are high quality. There is no need to qualify the review of this, or, frankly, any, of her self-published books with a tag along the lines of "excellent for a self-published book." I've read all four of the books that she has published. They have attractive covers, and the prose inside of them is well-written, grammatically correct and largely error free. Kudos.

So, with that introduction, there are a few things that I want to say about this book, both about the romance and then, in a moment, about her realistic and sensitive exploration of the subject of college acquaintance sexual assault.

So, first, the romance. This book has been compared to Beautiful Disaster by some of my reader friends. This comparison does a disservice to this book. Easy is better than Beautiful Disaster. So, so, so much better.

I love Jacqueline. She is strong and intelligent and exhibits more than a little bit of backbone. She has a great deal of self-confidence, but even more importantly, she treats herself as though she is a worthy person. She is saddened by the break up of a long term relationship, and is appropriately emotive, but never does she devolve into a caricature of a heroine who wallows in self-pity by collapsing into a mass of self-indulgent drama. Fiction could use a lot more Jacquelines.

The romance is sweet and unfolds naturally. Lucas is a genuinely likeable guy, who treats Jacqueline with respect as their relationship develops. He is the kind of guy that, if you are the mother of a teenaged girl, you hope your daughter will meet when she gets to college. Hardworking, intelligent, unentitled, compassionate, and strong.

This book is worth reading for the romance.

It is, however, the backstory where Ms. Webber really shines. I have no idea what her personal experience includes, but, as a sexual assault prosecutor, I felt that her treatment of college acquaintance sexual assault was beautifully done.

There are only three things required for a rape to occur. A victim, an opportunity, and a rapist. All too often, even in fiction, writers treat rape, especially acquaintance rape, as though, somehow, non-rapists sort of accidentally commit it. This book, thankfully, takes a much more realistic, appropriate, non-victim blaming approach. It is empowering to young women who may have been the victim of this crime, while acknowledging that society, often, treats rape victims in a disparaging, irresponsible, and cruel manner. It is not uncommon for the community to rally around the rapist - the Buck's of the world - while treating the victim as though she has committed some sort of a crime by reporting that she was sexually assaulted.

I don't want to allow this review to digress into a public service announcement, but there is a reason that rape, and especially rape committed by an acquaintance, is an extremely underreported crime. Ms. Webber's book provides an explanation of that phenomenon in a way that is sensitive and well-done. I very much admire her for her treatment of this subject. If she makes one victim feel better - as though it isn't her fault - then she will have accomplished something truly remarkable with this story.

Overall, I'd give this book 4 1/2 stars, and would just say "thank you" to the author.

Forged In Fire by Trish McCallan

I don't exactly know what to say about this book:



This was my KOLL book of the month for March. There were some things I really enjoyed about the book, and some things that left me disappointed.

Plot summary:

Beth Brown is not the kind of woman who is particularly spontaneous, and she's not the sort of woman who attracts badass, hardbodied warriors. Nonetheless, when Beth has a disturbing dream that appears to be coming true, and that includes the hijacking and slaughter of an entire airplane full of passengers, Beth gets into her car and drives to the airport just to assure herself that there isn't anything to worry about. Once she arrives at the gate, she catches the eye of Zane Winter, the above-mentioned badass, hardbodied Navy SEAL warrior.

Zane Winter is one of the men in her dream who has been slaughtered by the hijackers. Zane Winter also has some special abilities of foresight himself, and he knows that something bad is going to happen -- something that he, with the help of Beth, needs to stop. The fact that he is convinced that Beth is his soul mate is supremely inconvenient timing. It's up to Zane to get he and Beth through a day that is steeped in violence and death to the otherside, where he can make her his.

Review:

What did I like about this book? Well, it is a fast-paced read. I finished it in about two hours, and it definitely sucked me in and kept me turning the pages. The romance is on the back burner for most of the book, however, because there is alot, and I mean alot, of crazy, violent, kidnapping, terrorist drama in this book. It felt a lot like a season of 24, with a very romantic subplot.

There were two areas that left me disappointed, though. First, this book holds itself out as a paranormal romance. It's not really PNR. The paranormal aspect of the book is extremely limited, and doesn't add much to the plot at all. I would consider this book to be a straight contemporary romance, and the "paranormal" stuff could be removed without losing much of the story. Beth's "dream" does pay a very important part in the book, but it would have been possible for the author to put Beth in the same position of knowledge without having to go through the whole "dream" aspect. Fundamentally, I thought that the paranormal aspects actually weakened the story.

The second thing that I have a major problem with was the ending. This book ended with the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers, and frankly it pissed me off. There is an important character who's life is literally hanging by a thread and that storyline is left unresolved and unanswered. Going back to my 24 analogy, if the book started at 7:00 a.m., Jack Bauer time, it ended at 8:30 p.m. I absolutely hate it when authors do this. It is a cheap, skeevy way to ensure that readers will buy your next book. I would've bought the next book anyway, because I liked the story, I enjoyed the characters, and I was sucked in. It wasn't necessary to leave one of the characters in surgery to entice me. And now, because I hate to reward what I consider to be bad behavior, I am considering giving up on the series. Because I have no confidence that she won't do the same thing with the next book, and what's going to happen if she gets bored with the books and decides not to finish them at all.

So, overall, I would've given this book 4 stars. It was a 4 star read for me right up to the end. The end was worth about 2 stars. Therefore, I am going to settle on 3 stars, and take some time to make up my mind and decide if I'm willing to give this series an opportunity to redeem itself.

Final Catch-Up: Double Edge

The final catch-up post for the blog! I picked this one up as a holiday freebie. Robert Walker had a huge list of his books available for free.




REVIEW (3 stars):

This was my first Robert Walker book, although I have downloaded a number of others to my kindle. In spite of the weaknesses of this book, I expect that I will try a few others.

On the plus side, the book was free. It was also interesting, and fairly well written. There were few typographical errors. The story made sense and did not contain multiple plot holes or other issues. I found it sufficiently entertaining that I didn't quit reading. Lucas Stonecoat, the main character, is Native American and I quite enjoyed the explanation of his backstory and history.

However, I found some fairly substantial negatives. First and foremost, I found the dialogue contrived, wooden and unconvincing. This presented a major problem for me, as it frequently pulled me out of the story. In addition, the relatiionship between the two main characters, Lucas and Meredyth, was not believable to me. Not because they were poorly matched, but because they are obviously attracted to one another, and Meredyth's professed reasons for not pursuing the attraction made her seem shallow and unlikeable. I don't think that the author intended her to be shallow and unlikeable.

I don't know how much of the negative impression is related to the fact that this book involved a great deal of psychic detection. I really didn't like that aspect of the story. I am a fan of the police procedural, which is what I expected when I picked up the book, so the whole pyschic angle turned me off. I felt that it provided a cheap and easy solution to what would have been a complex and difficult investigation. A different reader may feel very differently about this aspect of the book.

It is certainly not my intention to pan the book. I picked the book up for free & it is the second of the series. I wonder if I would have felt differently about it had I not jumped into the series at midpoint. I am interested enough in Lucas Stonecoat that I plan to buy the first book in his series.

I would recommend this book for fans of John Sanford's Lucas Davenport series.

Playing Catch-Up: The Lincoln Diary

I read this as my first self-published book-of-the-week. As the cover would suggest, it was simply dreadful. I picked up for free, although the author wants $5.99 for it now!




REVIEW (2 stars):

This book was a chore to finish, although I did finish it. I picked it up for free, and I am glad that I did, because it is extremely poorly written, with structural issues as well as issues of language.

First, in terms of the structural issues, the pacing is terrible. The book is very slow moving at the beginning, and while it does pick up near the end, it doesn't pick up enough to deliver an interesting read. In addition, dialogue is difficult to get right for even the most proficient authors. Mr. Fowler's dialogue is wooden and unconvincing. His characters never rise above stock, sterotypical characterizations. More specifically, in more than one area, he indulged himself in some fairly obviously anti-Conservative rants. The fact that I agree in principle with the content of the rants notwithstanding, their presence in this book was a cheap plot device to convey the "badness" of the character.

Second, the word choice is often wrong, or weird. Other reviews have noted his constant mispelling of b-line, instead of beeline. In addition, a small smattering of some of the weirdness included "But that didn't stop Sarah's questions from having minds of their own," "she had to fold herself up like a pretzel to slink down the aisle," windows that were "batted" down, and "long, poised strides." None of these images make any sense at all. Questions don't think. No one slinks like a pretzel. Windows are battened down. Strides can certainly be long, but they aren't poised. People are poised.

Finally, in terms of the content, this book has almost nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln, except for a few Lincoln facts that are scattered as total non-sequiturs throughout the book. It is a standard, if poorly written, murder mystery with an amateur sleuth who plays lacrosse and is, of course, way smarter than the "Keystone Kop" detective who is actually investigating the homicide. The police procedural aspects of the book are inaccurate and, at times, silly.. One of the reasons that I selected this book was because I am a bit of a history dork, and I thought that the historical aspects of the book might make it interesting -- sort of National Treasure-ish, if you will. It has almost nothing to do with the actual content of "Lincoln's Diary."

Overall, I cannot recommend this book, even for free. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of books available for the kindle that are much better than Mr. Fowler's freshman foray into publishing. While I suspect that this review will be poorly received given the number of five-star reviews that were submitted by individuals who are not verified purchasers, I did buy this book, and I did read it in its entirety, as difficult a task as that turned out to be.