Overall, this was a promising story
924824
<b>My original <a href="https://wp.me/p2Tl8I-9vU">The Reach Between Worlds</a> audiobook review and many others can be found at <a href="http://audiobookreviewer.com">Audiobook Reviewer</a>.</b>

The Reach Between Worlds by C.M Hayden is the first book in the series called The Archlight Saga. Taros parents are really sick and so he must resort to unsavory dealings with a crime lord to try to make some money to afford their medicine and to support the family. As a part of this, Taro and his sister are suddenly thrust into a complex plot that starts with Taro and his sister entering the Magistarium to learn magic, and also break out a prisoner. The crime lord and the prisoner stand starkly against the Magisterium and what it stands for, leaving Taro in the middle. However, as Taro starts to truly become a part of the Magistarium and make friends, he begins to waver on his loyalties. As the stakes get higher, Taro must decide which side of the fight he wants to be on.

Overall, this was a promising story. A young boy whos caught between good and evil and in the meantime enters a school to learn magic. And the teachers pitted against this prisoner who escapes and everything hinges on Taros actions. Unfortunately, I didn't feel compelled by any of the characters and many of them felt similar enough that I had a hard time remembering who was who. I was also a little confused about how everything worked, from the magic to the arc light itself, that powers the city. I think that if I had found Taro compelling I would have been able to overlook lack of complete understanding of how everything functioned, but he just seemed to take action after action without much personality. This all compounded. However, since the plot was good, the end was interesting and set up the next novel nicely.

The narration by John Pirhalla was well done, with clearly distinguishable voices for each of the characters. The production quality was good as well. I would recommend this novel to anyone who likes a young adult story about learning magic, learning how to survive in the middle of a complex mess of powerful people, and making hard decisions.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.
2661221
A promising start to a new series, Oath Forger had me hanging on to every word. An interesting premise, even if a lot fantastical, I found myself drawn to each character. However, the story is far less steamy than I was hoping and, despite being labeled an RH, the heroine clearly favors one partner over the others. Not to sound whiny, but one of the draws of this story for me was the RH aspect. I am hoping the future installments played into that more. The other big complaint I have is that the lead automatically assumes, without even knowing what the Oath Forger is, that she is a fake. Knowing nothing about these aliens and their ways, she just assumes that she isn't what she thinks she is but must pretend anyway hopes of returning home and not getting into trouble when they find out she isn't the Oath Forger. It was so frustrating to continuously read.
4290782
The premise has a lot of potential, and I am looking forward to where it goes from here. This really did seem to be a "beginning" rather than a real start.  By that, I mean, that nothing was really all that fully developed. There are a lot of characters and events that have the potential to develop into a powerful and compelling story.  Currently, things are just on the cusp.  It's almost there.  I chalk this up to a new series and set of characters and the writer needing to fully embrace the characters and determine their direction. Could have used a bit of that before it was published, but I'm willing to give the second book in the series a try to see how things go.
4076517
The premise of this story is full of promise.  Characterization is good, the back story is intriguing. The book falls down a little in descriptive narration, to much time spent on trivial descriptions of meals, clothing etc..  A good rule, if the passage slows the book down, it goes.  It necessary to maintain the story's momentum thus descriptions of the relationships should be parred down.  There is promise, a little better job on editing would help move the story along.

I admire anyone the puts pen to paper to spin a tale, but most writing is evolutionary, and we should see steady improvement in this series as the story unfold in subsequent volumes.

Admiral effort.
69810
First, let me say that I'm a fairly tough critic so it takes a lot for me to give any book five stars. I liked the premise of this book and it was an enjoyable enough read, so it really deserves 3.5 stars.  The story line was a little choppy in parts and I didn't feel there was enough development in certain areas (such as the character becoming a witch and all that entailed).  However, I didn't grow bored with it and I liked most of the characters, but just not enough to continue with the series. I do feel this author shows great promise though, so I wish her much continued success.
995497
As an author's first book, this wasn't a bad attempt. There is a lot of complex subplots that could have been better spaced over several books to avoid confusion. The dialog between characters felt stilted and the conclusion of the love interest didn't feel natural. There was good potential for this story and some solid research backing some of the premise, but the author should have taken more time to develop the characters and environment. A lot of details about the researched parts were crammed in. (Trying to avoid spoilers while reviewing here) I bought the second in hopes to see some growth in the writing style.
2263418
Lots of promotional hype for this book coming from the publisher and I don't think it's as strong as advertised. The story mixes elements that are outright derivative with some unique ideas; the prose ranges from too simple to nicely done. Once I got into it a bit,  I found myself caring for the main character and her well-described surroundings. Better than a 3-star, but not yet worthy of a 4-star rating, IMHO.

If the growth in writing that is apparent within this first installment continues into the next in the installment, this will become a series worth looking forward to.
4118079
Sweet story, but I think the author could have built out the story and characters better. Has very good potential.
4179462
The premise of Tyed was interesting, and it had a lot of promise but it just fell a little short in execution for me. There were moments I really liked both the main characters, and but there were other times I found myself shaking my head at things they were doing and saying. I didn't quite feel the connection Tyler and Blaire were supposed to have- I felt like I was being told they belong together, instead of being shown. The time spent with them together wasn't enough to convince me that this was an all-consuming passion, which it seems like it was supposed to be.
To me Tyed has a bit of a Beautiful Disaster vibe to it, and I cannot stand that book, so it was hard for me to connect with it as much as I would have liked.
Blaire had her funny moments- I did enjoy her thoughts with her heart, head, and brain fighting it out with each other.
Ty had the potential to be a really unexpectedly sweet character, and he was at times, but I don't feel we got to see enough of him in that regard. His big secret, although surprising, was kind of a letdown, and his response when it was revealed even more so. I would have liked to have seen him show, not remorse exactly, but a little more understanding of why Blaire reacted like she did when she found out.
Tyed's a cute story that had a lot of potential, it just wasn't quite for me.
817030
A little predictable, but I enjoyed this story.
3694558
I liked this well enough.  The story is good but I can see potential for it being better and hope that will happen for the sequel.
803266
It took me a while to get very interested in the story, but I'd gotten it in exchange for a review, so I kept going.  The second half was much better.  The pace and plot got going and I got engaged with the story.  It's a story of an ordinary family having something extraordinary (paranormal) happen to them.  That's a setup that usually interests me, but I only gave three stars for several reasons.  One was the family's unlikely easy acceptance of them, but I think the author didn't want this to be a long novel, and so tried to keep the number of words to a set amount, partly by reducing the plot points.  Many scenes were cut off right at the climax, when I wanted to see how the scene continued to unfold.  The fight scenes come to mind, for instance.  And once I had to go back to see if I'd turned two pages by mistake because suddenly something unrelated was happening.  Specifically, this was the scene when Samuel was explaining himself to Geoffrey and then Geoffrey is telling Alyssa to keep her coin safely.  Maybe the author cut a paragraph or so and forgot to go back and fix it?  Why did Samuel or at least his presence and story never get told to the cards? It was a big point in the story about why they existed and how badly they wanted to know the answer.  And why was Mags' revelation of her newfound identity included?  Or her parents' problems?  Neither had anything to do with how the story unfolded.  And what was up with the dynamics of Billy's and Mags' difficulty getting along?
The cards were all very interesting.  Alyssa and Mags were somewhat interesting.  I really liked Billy.  I got tired of Sammy and how she was talking like a three year old really quickly.  Mom being a realtor was a good choice.  The thing is, I wanted to hear more about the dynamics of the whole situation and the cards and their relationships, and it just wasn't happening.  Lots of potential to be a great story, but in the end was not edited quite well enough for me, so it was only a good story.
1588601
A very good premise for a spanking fiction with lots of potential, but the story fell short for me. So much more could have been done to build the characters and their relationship. Izzy was feisty and understandably dismayed at being taken for a mate without any input on her behalf. Grayson kept telling her that her opinions were valued, as were her feelings, but he was constantly scolding her for expressing those opinions, and he outright ignored her distress at others. I would have liked to have seen him compromise more - it was all about his needs and his way of life. I didn't care for the fact that he punished in anger at one point and used sexual punishments. I would have liked to have seen Izzy put up more of a fight over what SHE wanted - and perhaps have him make amends and again, do some compromising and learning what Izzy needed to be happy (and not sexually as that was OTT).
4127786
The premise for this story is a unique take on fantasy fiction. While I do believe this story could have been great, it is not. The back stories for the characters are intriguing but for their reactions are one-dimensional. The scenes in the story are largely glossed over without much depth. I found myself glossing over descriptions of areas to get to the meat of the story because the descriptions became redundant.

After those negative facts here is why I have recommended this story to a friend and give the book 4-stars:

I enjoyed it. It is a lighthearted novel which I could read in a couple of hours. While it does not have as much depth as my usual course of books do, it did provide a temporary relief from the stresses of reality. The unique story line kept me reading because I kept asking "What can this author dream up next?" I loved the premise of the book. Absolutely loved it.

However, some recommendations for the author:

Request alpha and beta readers for continuity and to assess the depth of the book for the reader.

There are some minor grammatical errors were correctly spelled words were misplaced into sentences. (Not enough to prevent me from reading, but having beta readers will help catch those.)

Revise your story further. I would have considered these books an excellent first draft, but then tried to go back to insert more detail and conflict development. There are many spots in the book that I would have loved for you to elaborate further to expand the scene.
4616589
Overall, this book did drive me to finish so I could find out what happened, so I guess I'd say the suspense is there. I did enjoy the story.  However, there were a few issues. For instance, I found myself annoyed by the excessive use of some words and phrases ("freaking out" and a couple of others come to mind).  There must be many other ways to phrase those things without using the same words. Also, I noticed few spots with redundancy or contradictions in little details, where something is repeated or changed in a way that doesn't make sense, a few paragraphs apart.  They weren't the kind of things that affected the plot, I just had to go back and make sure I had read things right, which was kind of distracting.  Some of the dialogue or descriptions of things seemed a little awkward or contrived, but only some. I also found myself distracted by a glaring number of errors that should never have made it into print.  Seriously, the person who edited this book must have only used one eye and half of their brain to get the job done, because it's very, VERY poorly edited.  The other things that bugged me probably could have been fixed with a more thorough editing process as well.  I would have enjoyed the book a lot more without these issues, because they distracted me from the plot.  In the interest of full disclosure, my degree is in English.  :)  But I think at the very least the grammatical and punctuation errors would be picked up by just about any reader.  Better editing would have made this a much better reading experience for me.
4974520
The story idea was charming, and the author had some really interesting and new ideas for story lines. However, many of them were undeveloped with characters appearing and disappearing. It feels like an early draft. I didn't dislike the story, the characters are somewhat noncannon; however, it doesn't take away from the feeling of the characters either (maybe with the exception of Colonel Fitzwilliam at times). This story has lots of potential, and with some editing and development could be a really great piece!
882744
I did enjoy the story overall. It bogged down in several places or this may just be the author's rhythm and I never got used to it. Near the end things sped up to the point that it felt rushed and it had sequel or hopefully, series, stamped all over it. As an introduction to a character it offered enough to ensure that I'll pick up the next novel if it ever comes.