Blog Tour: Fire on the Island by J.K. Hogan

Buy the book: Amazon US

Information:

Title: Fire on the Island

Author: J.K. Hogan

Publisher: Sapphire Star Publishing

Series: Vigilati #1

Target audience: Adult

Genre: Paranormal romance

Length: 376 pages

Story: All Isla Macallen wanted was a simple existence on her little Scottish island, free from her mother's insanity and the prying eyes of neighbors. What she got was embroiled in a war for the souls of mankind. A war of good versus evil, of witches versus demons, and Isla learns that she alone can end it.

Dr. Jeremiah Rousseau was a self-proclaimed nomad, traveling the world researching paranormal phenomena. He doesn't expect his research to lead him to Scotland, and to the woman who will turn his world upside down.

Together with a facetious shapeshifting animal spirit guide, Jeremiah and Isla discover that she is part of an ancient bloodline bred to protect the gateways between the human world and the spirit world, to keep evil demons from destroying them. They must find the key to defeating Alastore, the demon king, and closing the gate before Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is lifted. As the war for their souls wages around them, Isla and Jeremiah will risk it all for love—a love neither had ever thought possible.

Thoughts and impressions: First of all, what a setting! I love the Scottish islands: they’re picturesque, they’re remote enough to each have a very distinct personality, and they’re the perfect getaway. I’ve been to several of the Scottish islands (Colonsay, Jura, Mull, and Islay) and my memories of them are all of a rural paradise, the kind that you don’t tend to find very often in Britain nowadays (though the beaches leave a lot to be desired). The author shows an obvious passion for her setting and managed to create that isolated island feeling that is just so important (in my opinion) in such a story. I felt that she did  her setting justice. I hope that inhabitants of these islands would think so too.

Though perhaps not entirely original in subject matter, the story is definitely one of the more interesting paranormal romances that I’ve read so far this year. There was just the right balance of romance and action that I needed – one didn’t outweigh the other and there was no getting bogged down in the details to the point where I just lost interest in it all. Beyond this, as the character herself is not actually initiated into this supernatural world that she’s a part of, the reader was able to follow her baby steps. Isla is unaware of her heritage as a witch and so it never felt like she was taking the time to break away from her story in order to explain her world to me. I was able to discover everything alongside her and I felt that this gave the story a much smoother and more authentic feel.

There is one character, Marduk, who is quite the funny guy. I’m not as sure about the quotes he spews as you have to be aware of the general culture they come from in order for it to really work. This means that anyone not entirely familiar with Hollywood won’t connect with him as well. It really dates the story more than any other aspect of it. Some people like this but I’m one of those who are wary of it. Despite this, he was a great character and one of my favourites!

The romance did advance possibly a little on the fast side, but whirlwind romances do happen like that (my own included, so I can’t judge). I did have some issues with passing time on occasion – the narrative would tell me that X time had passed but I didn’t get the impression that it had been that long while reading.

The witches were fabulous. I’m particularly interested in witches right now (along with ghosts) so any book set on a Scottish island (part of my childhood) that adds witches (part of my paranormal preferences) is a definite hit for me before I’ve even cracked it open. There are other paranormal creatures also present and they're just the icing on the cake. I really enjoyed them all, even the ones that I'm usually not that big on in this genre.

What’s more, the characters caught my interest and they didn’t let go, each developing at a believable rate, allowing me to connect with them and really come to root for them in their fight against the evil demons. This is just what I look for in a book. Obviously this one turned up to be just my cup of tea.

I will definitely be tuning in for book two!

Final verdict: A really enjoyable, well-developed and addictive paranormal romance. 4.5 stars

Extra notes: Both bad language and sex are present.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I am a member of Reading Addiction Blog Tours and a copy of this book was provided to me by the author. Although payment may have been received by Reading Addiction Blog Tours, no payment was received by me in exchange for this review. There was no obligation to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are entirely my own and may not necessarily agree with those of the author, publisher, publicist, or readers of this review. This disclosure is in accordance with the Federal Trade Commision’s 16 CFR, Part 255, Guides Concerning Use of Endorcements and Testimonials in Advertising*

The author:

J.K. Hogan has been telling stories for as long as she can remember, beginning with writing cast lists and storylines for her toys growing up. When she finally decided to put pen to paper, magic happened. She is greatly inspired by all kinds of music and often creates a “soundtrack” for her stories as she writes them.

J.K. resides in North Carolina, where she was born and raised. A true southern girl at heart, she lives on a farm with her husband and their three horses, one miniature donkey, one cat, and two champion agility dogs.

In addition to writing, she enjoys training and competing in dog sports, spending time with her large southern family, camping, boating and, of course, reading! Please feel free to visit J.K.’s contact page—she’d love to hear from you!

Author Website
Twitter: @JK_Hogan
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Blog Tour: Circe by Jessica Penot

Buy the book: Amazon US ; Amazon UK ; Barnes & Noble

Information:

Title: Circe

Author: Jessica Penot

Publisher: Lachesis Publishing

Target Audience: Adult

Genre: (Psychological) thriller

Length: 209 pages

Story:  When Dr. David Black takes an internship at a very old psychiatric hospital back home in Alabama, he vows two things—that he will be a better husband to his beautiful and loving wife Pria, and that he will stop cheating on her.

Then his enigmatic supervisor Dr. Cassie Allen, a self-proclaimed witch with ties to the underworld, begins to draw him into her darkness. David finds it hard to resist her wicked sensuality, but even harder to resist her evil pull.

As strange and violent deaths pile up left and right, David realizes that Cassie’s psychotic behavior is connected to the mysterious hospital itself. There a demonic force threatens to destroy everything that David holds dear—his wife, his family, even his very sanity.

Thoughts and impressions: First off, in my copy Doctor David Black is called Eric Black. As I received the book as a gift from Amazon, I’m not sure what happened there. It’s not that much of a big deal, but worth pointing out.

This book is one that lies firmly outside of my reading comfort zone. It’s very rare that I’ll read anything even resembling a psychological thriller, though I do enjoy watching movies of the same genre. The whole concept of the haunted asylum drew me to it. Haunted buildings, especially ones where horrors were committed by humans against other humans in the past, is a fascination that I think many people share. I know that I personally am fascinated by such things. So after some initial internal debate over whether I wanted to attach myself to an obligation to read something to far from my comfort zone, I finally caved in and couldn’t resist the temptation.

I got off to a bit of a rocky start with the story. The style at that point is very much tell rather than show (it does become more show later on after the foundations are laid) and the character, Eric, is one who repulsed me. But then, I’m fairly sure that he’s supposed to repulse the reader. At several points throughout the story he is described as being a ‘monster’, and he certainly is! Not in the whole “I go around killing people muahahah” sense, but in the sense that he does not seem to be capable of actually feeling. His thoughts and actions, despicable though many of them are, hold no real meaning for me, and thus entail no real consequences.

As he starts to come undone when things are spiralling out of his control, he takes refuge in the wife to whom he is incapable of being faithful. He keeps telling himself that he’s changed, that he just wants her now… but the reader’s been spoon-fed enough of this same sort of line that they know to be wary of his declarations. It’s just fear pushing him, not real emotional ties. Eventually his status as a monster is completely solidified in a way that I hadn’t been expecting, but one that gives the story, and this C.R.C. (Circe) mental hospital quite the twist!

The asylum was very well portrayed. It was only when Eric started his internship here and we were introduced to the variety of characters who reside there that I was finally able to stop keeping the story at arm’s length. I adored meeting the mentally handicapped individuals and how their various handicaps were manifested. I’m not going to go into any of these, though, as that would spoil the discovery for anyone who does choose to read this story.

The asylum itself wasn’t really so much creepy in the way that I’ve seen other creepy buildings portrayed in literature, but the entity that belongs to the grounds was certainly creepy enough to make up for it. I enjoyed the little titbits into the history of the asylum and would have liked to have had more random facts woven into the story, but I guess that’s what non-fiction books are for.

At the end of the day, even though I really didn’t like the character, I was able to get past this thanks to the compelling tale that is presented. It’s very rare that I can overlook such bad character traits so the author deserves points for that!

Style: As the story is written in the first person, it did occasionally feel like Eric was telling the reader about his story rather than narrating events as they occurred.

Final verdict: Not something that I would usually pick up but something that I’m glad I took the time to read! 4 stars

Extra notes: Both sex and bad language are present.

Blog Tour: Spectral by Shannon Duffy

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Buy the book: Kindle ; Nook ; Google ; Smashwords ; PDF

Tribute Books invited me to join this tour, I saw the book cover and knew there was no way I could say no. Just look at that gorgeous cover! It was cover-lust at first sight.

Information:

Title: Spectral

Author: Shannon Duffy

Publisher: Tribute Books

Target Audience: YA

Genre: Paranormal romance

Length: 242 pages

Story: Convinced she’s a part of the witness protection program, sixteen-year-old Jewel Rose is shuffled around the globe with her family like a pack of traveling gypsies. After arriving at lucky home twenty-seven, she stumbles upon a mysterious boy with magical powers claiming to be her guardian . . . and warning of imminent danger. Despite the obvious sparks between them, Jewel discovers a relationship is forbidden, and the more she learns about dark, brooding Roman, she begins to question who she can even believe—the family who raised her, or the supposed sworn protector who claims they’ve been lying to her all along. 

As she struggles to uncover who her family has really been running from, she is forced to hide her birthmark that reveals who she is. With new realities surfacing, unexplained powers appearing, and two tempting boys vying for her heart, Jewel battles to learn who she can trust in an ever growing sea of lies, hoping she’ll make it through her seventeenth birthday alive.

Thoughts and impressions: This book left me feeling torn on two very important levels. I say very important because that’s what the story focused on. The main idea behind the plot was fabulous. Books about witches have not really stormed the market yet so it’s still possible to come up with an idea and have it be very original. I found that to be the case here and I loved how witchcraft was presented. I especially loved how red herrings were put in place to lead you on a wild goose chase about the internal structure of the convent that features as a driving force behind events here. On the other hand, the romance was far too in-your-face for my tastes. I’m going to start by addressing why the romance was not for me.

The best kind of romance, to my mind, is one that evolves slowly. The two characters get to know each other, a kindling attraction becomes something more, and when it is finally acted upon you feel fulfilled as the reader. That was not the case in this book. In fact, here it was completely the other way around. When Jewel first laid eyes on Chase, it was so transparent as to be laughable. Of a group of youths, he is the only one to be described. The next day she catches sight of some other guy and again it’s lust at first sight. I’m not a fan of insta-love at the best of times but for it to be used in tangent with a love triangle already means that the romance aspect won’t appeal to me. This was reinforced by the fact that both attractions were based on nothing more than how “hot” each guy looked. Trust me when I say that each and every time that either of these two boys comes into the story, the word “hot” will be in there too. Sometimes it’s even about how “totally hot” they look. At the best of times, “hot” used as a term to describe someone’s physical attractiveness does not appeal to me, but when overused as it was here it got to the point where I wanted to remove it from the author’s vocabulary.

Beyond this, both romances never get anywhere beyond shallow. Jewel manages to witter on about them to some length, but Chase always seemed like a third wheel to me, and never really seemed to serve a purpose other than that of being “the other man”. He did play a small role in things in the second half, but that could easily have been filled by a different character who wasn’t a romantic interest. Roman had absolutely nothing substantial backing his supposed love for Jewel. Sure, I remember being a teen and living on attraction pushed upon me by my hormones, but this took things to a whole new level.

Balancing this out was my interest in the actual plot. I really liked the basis for this story and how Jewel managed to go from a character knowing nothing about anything to one who was strong in her own right and managed to uncover the answers using her own unconventional means. Occasionally she did border on being a bit too stupid for it to really sell me – like jumping into a car with a stranger while being stalked by some other stranger – but I was able to look past these small moments.

The witchcraft was what really sold me. I’ve always preferred witches to vampires and the lore behind the story did not disappoint here. The author started out with a good idea and she wove a strong plot from it that was kept going at a fast pace as Jewel uncovered more secrets about her identity, heritage and role in wiccan society. The witchcraft was not too far-fetched as to make it unbelievable and my initial reaction to how certain abilities were obviously far inferior to others was proven completely wrong when the author completely blind-sided me with how powerful these seemingly boring abilities could be.

Jewel, if you overlook her occasional moments of stupidity and the lack of vocabulary to be able to describe a man’s attractiveness beyond “hot”, was a good character who didn’t rely on others to get her where she needed to be. She discovered a fount of independence within herself and though she was in a sticky situation, she never gave in. What’s more, her pure and tender love for her little brother was so endearing that it made the character just that much more realistic and endearing to me in turn. Jayden was quite possibly the best character in the whole book!

Style: From time to time it was too informal for my tastes. I’m usually ok with informal styles, such as in the Georgia Nicholson books or Immortal Beloved, but this one just bugged the grumpy grammarian in me rather than amusing me. Possibly this was because in the other two books mentioned the narrators are constantly making fun of themselves and their situations via the narrative whereas this particular narrative took itself fairly seriously, which didn’t go hand in hand so well with the style.

Final verdict: I adored the witchcraft in the story. I really didn’t like the romance aspect of it. I’m going to meet in the middle with a brand new 3.5 stars rating.

Extra notes: Some bad language present. No sex.

Find the book on Goodreads here.

About the author:

Shannon Duffy writes young adult and middle grade fiction. She grew up on the beautiful east coast of Canada and now lives in Ontario, Canada. She is the mom of one boy, Gabriel, her angel. She loves writing, reading, working out, soccer, and the sport of champions-shopping. She is the author of the young adult paranormal romance, SPECTRAL. Her upcoming middle grade fantasy novel, GABRIEL STONE AND THE DIVINITY OF VALTA is scheduled for a January 2013 release.

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Darkness Falls by Cate Tiernan

I found the first book in this trilogy, Immortal Beloved, at my local bookstore at the start of last summer. It was one of those books where the cover was just so gorgeous that I snapped it up without ever looking at the back of the book! That turned out to be ok, though, as I adored Immortal Beloved and it ranks among my favourite reads of 2011.

So I knew I wanted this one, the sequel, as soon as possible and though I started with the good intention of waiting until the paperback version was released, I very quickly gave up on that idea because I needed more! There were two options for the pre-order: hardback or large paperback. I went for the paperback but then the publisher didn’t make that version available! Nooooo! Thankfully I was able to get the hardback at no extra cost.

As soon as it was delivered I had my nose in it and I didn’t pull it out again until I’d reached the last page.

Information:

Title: Darkness Falls

Author: Cate Tiernan

Series: Immortal Beloved #2

Publisher:

Target Audience: YA

Genre: Urban fantasy

Length: 398 pages

Story: You can run from your past, but it will always catch up.

Nastasya has lived for hundreds of years, but for some reason it never seems to get any easier. She's left behind her days of debauchery to find peace and forgiveness at River's Edge, a safe haven for wayward immortals. There she's uncovered her family's epic history, reclaimed her magickal powers, and met Reyn, whom she dubs "the Viking god. " Just as she settles into her new life, Nastasya learns that her old friends might be in town....

Reuniting with her gorgeous and dangerous ex-best-friend, Innocencio, Nas wonders if she'll ever be truly free of her dark legacy. Is Incy dangerous, power-hungry, and wicked? Or is he the only one who truly understands Nas's darkness? Either way, Nas is desperate to find out who she really is-even if the answer kills her.

Thoughts and impressions:Immortal Beloved was one of the books that I read while in France last summer. I left it with my mum for her to read but I wish I hadn’t now. She didn’t read it anyway and I would really have liked to have reread it before going into this one. This first book caught me up, took me on one hell of a rollercoaster ride and left me in awe. Everything about Nastasya had me intrigued, always wanting to know more, to understand things better.

As soon as Darkness Falls was delivered to my door, I had my nose in the book. It was one of my most awaited books of 2012… and it did not disappoint!

Things pick up shortly after they ended in Immortal Beloved. Nat is still confused about life, the universe and everything. She’s constantly having to re-evaluate things she thought she knew to fit with the world view she is acquiring staying at River’s. She’s also battling her attraction to Reyn – their past is intertwined in a way that should leave them enemies, not lovers. The reader realises that Reyn is the Viking warrior that this Icelandic princess needs, though! Their relationship does undergo a transformation in this book but there are still many promises for what is to come in the final novel in the trilogy. I absolutely adored the interaction between Reyn and Incy towards the end of the book and what such reactions reveal about Reyn as a character!

Speaking of Incy, he completely fascinated me in in the first book. Everything about him was an enigma that I simultaneously wanted to unravel and leave intact so I could wonder him from afar. He does cme into things in this book and as his enigma unravels a bit, more questions are posed. The final showdown reaches epic proportions. Is it morbid of me that I’m rather hoping that he’ll figure in the next book and that both he and Nat will have to confront the repercussions of his actions as well as the irrevocable damage they did to a hundred years of friendship? I want to see how they would react to the other’s presence when she has to face the man behind the monster and he has to stand before the friend he so badly wronged.

But more importantly, it is through Incy that we are introduced to the portents of what is still to come in the final novel. Incy had some seriously dark magics at his disposal and to think that he was merely the student means that we may only have touched the tip of this particular iceberg.

Once again, Nat has to battle her own worst enemy: herself. She runs and hides from things she doesn’t want to face, like her attraction to Reyn or Incy running the show for her, or she steps in and does more damage than good, like at the store. On top of that, things keep going wrong for her and she’s soon convinced that she is the bane of everyone’s existence as well as her own. This, interspersed with recollections from various periods of her past, makes her a very complicated character who struggles to grow. In fact, she regresses for a time before she’s able to take two steps forward from her one step back.

Everything is put in place for a wonderful, thrilling conclusion. If only I didn’t have to wait until January for its release!

Style: The book is written in a very colloquial, chatty style. I don’t always like this particular sort of style but it works really well here!

Final verdict: I loved it! I want to know what happens next. Is it January 2013 yet? 5 stars

Extra notes: A fair amount of bad language is present. Sex is not.

The Witches by Peter Curtis

Arie and I went to Amsterdam a couple of months ago to get some clothes for a big night out with his colleagues. As the English-language bookstores are in Amsterdam, he very kindly offered to buy me two books while we were there! Woo! So while I was browsing, this title The Witches caught my eye. Coincidentally enough, I’d read the book’s synopsis only a day or two before and it had struck me as interesting and the cover was really very pretty (in a slightly creepy sort of way). With this in mind, I decided to take the book.

Presentation: A large paperback. There are 346 pages broken down into 25 chapters of roughly the same length.

Story: Canon Thorby is looking for someone to replace the current headmistress, who is retiring, of his small private school in Walwyk. Miss Mayfield appears to be the perfect choice: she spent a good length of time abroad in Entuba, Africa, trying to improve the lives of the natives; she appears to be docile and keeps to herself - just the woman for the job.

But when Miss Mayfield arrives in Walwyk, she soon discovers that one of her pupils is being abused by her grandmother and for some unknown reason, this girl will not speak out against her abuser. Miss Mayfield realises that not all is quite right in this seemingly quaint village and anyone who gets too close to the truth ends up having an accident. Despite the dangers, Miss Mayfield is determined to get to the bottom of everything.

Thoughts and impressions: The first thing I have to say is that at no point did I really feel any tension. Even at the end of the book when the climax was in full swing it was never particularly suspenseful.  A lot of the time the narrative was just meandering about, hinting at various things but never getting to the point where I really wanted to know more about them. Indeed, after Miss Mayfield’s inevitable ‘accident’, I was ready to tear my hair out as it just completely stopped the story when it had only just got to the point where it was verging on getting interesting.

What’s more, there were a number of threads of the plot that were just left hanging. Miss Mayfield sets up a date with a man but the book finishes before it gets to that point. She pawns a ring as she desperately needs the cash, repeating multiple times that she wants it back but she never goes to pick it up. We never find out what happened to Rose’s letters (though I suppose we can guess).

I never really felt a connection to most of the characters and I think at times I was supposed to. Isabel Thorby is one where I don’t know how exactly I was supposed to deduce her role from the one short scene she gets towards the start of the story.

Really, I suppose that the story is perfectly fine, just somewhat dated. For all I know, this might have been typical of a horror story in the 1960s when it was written. Now, it never got my heart beating a little faster or had me hooked on every word on the page. I did, however, stop and blink a few times when I managed to forget that there have been significant advances in technology and then something is referred to in the story that was cutting-edge at that time but standard now (such as a torch with two buttons: one so the light flashes on only while the button is pressed and one that can be left down so that the light stays on.)

It’s funny that this would happen as I was almost always aware of the difference in other areas of society, such as religion. Though her religion doesn’t play a major role, Miss Mayfield does occasionally refer to God and the divine hand guiding her as well as a number of other things that were a common way of thinking in that day and age but have become less wide-spread in an increasingly atheist society.

While I’m sure that the author did her research on ‘witches’, a lot of the rites described in the book just seemed to be along the ‘we-reject-Christianity!’ lines and were designed to shock a Christian reader rather than actually being anything like the rituals I know of. As such this didn't ring true for me and just felt like anti-witchcraft propaganda.

And lastly, the ending was not very satisfactory. It felt to me as though the ending came before the story had really ended.

Style: Though the author's name on the book is masculine, this is actually a pseudonym and the author was a woman. I was fairly aware of this from the style of the narrative. I couldn’t say what, exactly stood out to me as being a marker of a female writer, but it just didn’t feel very male as I was reading it. The style is good, though the writing is full of punctuation that shouldn’t be there. There are commas randomly placed in the middle of sentences and speech marks where there is no speech. This made things confusing at times.

Final verdict: Though the style was fine, the story failed to capture and keep my attention. 2 stars.

Extra notes: I don’t remember any bad language. Sex behind closed doors.

Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan

(NB: This review is a little weird. I never wrote a review of this book for my blog, despite having read it after having set up the blog. But I did have a sort of back-to-basics review on Goodreads. However, in preparation for the upcoming review of its sequel, I decided to go back, tweak the review that I did have a little and get one on here.)

One day I went into my local English-language bookshop and there was this book, sitting on the shelves, looking at me. Look at that cover art! I didn't even bother to read the back of the book. I just picked it up and bought it. Funnily enough, there was a girl in front of me in the queue who, it transpired, had done the exact same thing. We had a bit of a giggle together at how shallow we are, but honestly, I could not pass up that cover art. I had to have it on my shelves!

Story: Nastasya has spent the last century living as a spoiled, drugged-out party girl. She feels nothing and cares for no one. But when she witnesses her best friend, a Dark Immortal, torture a human, she realizes something's got to change. She seeks refuge at a rehab for wayward immortals, where she meets the gorgeous, undeniably sexy Reyn, who seems inexplicably linked to her past. 

Nastasya finally begins to deal with life, and even feels safe--until the night she learns that someone wants her dead. 

Cate Tiernan, author of the popular Sweep series, returns with an engaging story of a timeless struggle and inescapable romance, the first book in a stunning new fantasy trilogy.

Thoughts and impressions: Nas is an immortal and able to channel magics. One night, her best friend cripples an innocent man using magics and Nas realises that her life has gone off the tracks and she needs to get control over it again. She finds shelter at a place for rehabilitaing immortals where everyone wants to help her to find her inner peace. But she still has to come to terms with who she is, her past and her present.

I loved Nas as a character. She was incredibly complex as an immortal who's been around for a good 450+ years. She's lived through so many difficult periods and the flashbacks serve to illustrate the many woes she has suffered. At times her story would really pull on my heartstrings. But then, as the world advances and Nas is slowly able to become a person herself rather than the shadow of a husband, she slips into darker ways, fueled by her best friend, Incy.

I have to admit that I was unsure about this book in the beginning. The first chapter was about Nas's party kids group, taking drinking and "fun" too far, resulting in a horrible incident that none of them did anything about. After that it gets very repetitive for a while, where Nas becomes her own worst enemy, questioning her every move and motivation. It improved vastly after a while when another immortal, much older than Nas herself, forces her to come to terms with her life the way she's been living it and sets out to help her find a sort of inner peace.

Well, inner peace is never easy to achieve and it's even harder when you've got a sexy, but reserved, golden warrior who's giving you a hard time but to whom you are inexplicably attracted. It's even more difficult when someone seems to be trying to kill you.

It's a storyline that's been worked before, but I enjoyed it a lot with its tweaks. I really liked the way that Nas was shown as almost being a master of disguise - she would reinvent herself with each new 'life' until she'd completely lost the girl she once was. I would have liked a less obvious antogonist (once Nas had stopped being both the protagonist and the antagonist) as it would have given the story that extra twist if it had been someone you'd never have expected who meant Nas harm.

I'm looking forward to the second book in the trilogy and seeing where the author will take it from here.

Style: Quirky, very chatty. Nas makes for a wonderful narrator.

Final verdict: I loved it! It was one of my top two reads of the summer. 5 stars

Extra notes: Bad language present. No sex.