Not so worthy an offering from a talented author
585541
I have loved Kathleen Woodiwiss' romances (The Flame and the Flower, The Wolf and the Dove and Shanna, for example, I rated at 5 stars). But this one was a real disappointment particularly by the standard she herself had set. The story is set in 1585 when Queen Elizabeth is on the throne and Sir Francis Drake is her sea dog fighting the Spanish. Elise Radborne, having lost the protection of her father who has disappeared, seeks shelter in her uncle's house--a house he gained when Maxim Seymour, the Marquess of Bradbury was accused of murder and lost his estate, his title and his honor. But Maxim survived and now seeks his revenge thinking to kidnap the uncle's daughter, the fair Arabella, who was once Maxim's betrothed. Instead he gets Elise by mistake and they spend the winter in a rundown castle in Germany.

The first half of the book just plodded along as Maxim and Elise argue ad nauseum. That could have been shorter and still given us the picture of their initial dislike for each other. I did not find their chemistry persuasive either, so that when they finally come together it seemed a bit unreal. (As one reviewer pointed out, Elise was too shrew like for too long.) We have to wait over 400 pages for their first love scene and it was a bit unreal as well as she did not act like the innocent she was. A more interesting character was Elise's other suitor, the merchant sea captain, Nicholas, a member of the Hanseatic League, the weathly merchant class that dominated trade along Northern Europe for centuries.

Even for Woodiwiss fans, I cannot recommend this tale unless you are a very patient person and can wade through a lot of stage setting for the ending.
2716913
After the much deserved, raving reviews of her earlier work, it is glaringly obvious while reading this novel that McCrumb is trying too hard to live up to her own standards, and the results lead to a very disappointing effort. This author is a "natural" storyteller, and that's why her previous books were so fresh and applauded. While reading The Rosewood Casket, the reader is often aware of the author's erratic attemtps to please the critics, and this truly effects the flow and believability of her natural storytelling. There are many groan inducing passages throughout the novel, many highly forced and completely unbelievable, with many appearing to be rushed without much thought being put into them. The overall feeling after completion is that it was basically a very silly and mediocre tale, laced with moments of the author's natural gifts, alas, fleeting moments, but, not nearly enough to ever recommend this book.
164070
Mitch Goth's "Delicate Rain" is the story of a runaway teenage girl who falls in with a group of drug-dealing outlaws. As premises go, this is right up my alley, so when I saw that I could download the book at no cost, I jumped at the opportunity.

I shouldn't have been so eager. I'm no stickler for perfection, but I do expect the books I read to meet a certain standard of professionalism. Unfortunately, "Delicate Rain" falls short in almost every respect. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors abound, to say nothing of run-on sentences, unnecessary stylistic flourishes, and the dreaded "head hopping" I and so many readers find objectionable. It's just not good writing, folks.

I could go on but to belabor the point would just be cruel. Let's just say that when I read that the protagonist's parents had achieved a good "report" with the police sergeant investigating their daughter's disappearance, I was done. That was at the 67% point, by the way, lest anyone think I didn't give the book a fair shot.

Beyond the technical issues, I had a real problem with the protagonist's motives, as her actions often didn't seem to make sense within the context of the story. I just couldn't imagine her doing half the things she does. I also had a problem with the overall believability of the plot. This premise begs for a gritty and realistic treatment, but it all felt very contrived and artificial to me. I would not be surprised to learn that the writer has no actual knowledge of the world he was depicting.

Still, I'm giving this book two stars because it's not an absolute disaster. I suspect the writer intended this to be a cautionary tale, and if so his motives were certainly commendable. He simply needs to spend a few more years honing his craft, and reading as many good books as he can, before sending his own work out into the world.
4495456
I am not sure how this book has gotten so many positive reviews--although in retrospect, it is a bit suspicious that all of the reviews were five-star raving declarations of "excellent", "wonderful", and "so emotional".  I very rarely write reviews for books, however, I think that it is gravely misleading that this book be rated with five stars.  While the over-arching story has potential, and the way in which the author gives different characters their own chapters in an attempt to weave together various story threads, the actual book falls very flat.

The writing is extremely poor.  Among the major problems that ruined the book are:

1.) The author constantly switches the point of view in the middle of sentences.  For example, she starts a sentence by talking about a man in the third person, "Preston saw that the man was driving down the road..." and then ends the sentence with a clause that is in the first person, "...and heard a thud that made his (the man driving) heart drop."  How would Preston know the internal mental state of the man driving, given that Preston is merely an observer to the situation?  There are hundreds of examples of this writing error.  Not to be too blunt about it, but this is something that inexperienced writers often do and should have been corrected by an editor.

2.) The author often inserts colloquial phrases that do not fit the situation that she as immersed her characters in.  For example, the author takes a grieving mother and randomly inserts paragraphs about "blowing off" a court appearance of her child's murderer, or paragraphs about scrapbooks that in no way contribute to the situation.  There are several of these examples where the story is not moved along for whole chapters.  Again, this is something an editor should have corrected.

3.) The author's story lines are not well thought through.  It seems as though she is forcing her characters into the Peter Pan story, rather than developing her characters in tandem with the fairy tale.

In the end, the book needs some serious attention before it should have been published.  Having an underdeveloped story or having an untalented writer sometimes can be overlooked, but having both traits in the same book is a disaster.  I realize that Ig is a publisher that tries to gain an audience for manuscripts that are overlooked by more mainstream publishers, but this book should not exist.  There are far better stories and far more talented writers who deserved to be published.
2403284
The second book I have read by Marylu Tyndall was sadly a disappointment. I didn't really enjoy Veil of Pearls and but gave The Falcon and the Sparrow a chance, one reason being that it is the only one of her novels set in Britain, but also because I did not want to give up on her work completely.

It had a promising beginning and premise, but was neither an especially good spy cum mystery novel nor a quality romance. In some respects, it had many parallels with the other, including assorted bunch of leering and lecherous aristocratic men, or jealous and snobbish aristocratic women one of whom was after the guy who was really falling for Dominque, a woman hiding the truth about her past or identity. Also a hero who has lost his belief in God because of suffering or difficult circumstances. Not an especially original characterization in the case of the last, and the former giving the impression of a somewhat formulaic or clich ridden story. Also, the consistent depiction of almost all wealthy/aristocratic characters in such a way does make me wonder if author dislikes the upper classes as a whole.

The romance was fairly typical for the genre with a nice Christian partner falling for the hurting and unavailable/unsuitable other half. There were too many coincidental nocturnal encounters in unbuttoned shirts or only a nightgown for my liking, and the romance bordering on inappropriate or verging on the racy or even obscene. The attempted rape scene was almost enough to tip it over the edge- there are other novels which involve such things, but the way they were written did not seem appropraite. In fact it came across as obscene, almost stomach- turning.
With everything I did feel uncomfortable reading the novel on some occasions. Not good for Christian fiction.

I'm not certain how accurate the setting was, and the historical details were at times interesting, but other deficiencies detracted from this. As with other books, I felt the descriptions of the supposed dirt, unhealthiness, unpleasantness and squalor which supposed blighted most cities throughout the `old days' was exaggerated and overdone. Even affluent areas like St James' Park stinking of manure, seriously?

Dominque's nocturnal wanderings in seedy areas of London seemed a common enough occurrence for some books in this genre. Yet not clever at all so her almost getting into trouble was hardly a surprise- until the mysterious man who was quite obviously an angel appeared to protect her.
I don't mean to appear facetious or irreverent, as the scripture does teach God can send angels to protect his people, but this happened in Veil of Pearls too so it seems to be quite a frequently used device, almost making it seem like an easy 'get out clause'.

I thank the author for emailing me the Kindle edition after alerting her to a copy uploaded to the internet without authorization, but due to two bad reading experiences I sadly do think I will steer clear of her books in future.
487419
I had the sense in reading this that the author is new to writing. He has talentthere are some well crafted scenes herebut they are lost amid the amateurish writing and clunky dialog. For example, chrck out this line about a third of the way into the story:
As my crash scene leader Im relying on you to think fast and act decisively because my reputation, valuable equipment and mens lives are all at risk when this jet hits the deck and you start making decisions down there.
Took me right out of the story. Folks, people don't speak to each other like this.
This was a free kindle ebook. I can't exactly say why I picked it upI rarely read free ebooks, maybe it was the USN nature storyline that attracted me since I served 14 years in the USN myselfbut I am sorry I picked it up. Little of value here, unfortunately.
I do think there is some talent here, as I said before. But the author should spend several years honing his craft, doing serious time with a keyboard as well as reading everything he can get his hands on. I'd recommend he put at least 200,000 words on the page (short stories, novellas, writing exercises, rewrites, rewrites, rewrites, etc) before publishing again. Work on the quality and the rest will come. Writing is not something to be learned overnight.
I can't recommend this, not even as a free ebook. My humble opinion only, of course. Two stars, leaning toward one.
1023667
I'm bemused as to why both books in this relatively new series by Jaffarian has more distinctly amateurish touches than anything I've read in her Odelia Grey or Granny Apples books. In the first book of the vampire series, Murder in Vein, the protagonist internally recites her own name and background as a way of clearing her mind. That's about on a par with being assigned an autobiographical essay. In the series' second book, Baited Blood, there's a fair amount of unnecessary and momentarily confusing head-hopping, as well as at least one continuity error. Add occasional awkward sentence constructions, and one has to wonder what's going on. Does this series have a different and less competent editor? Is "Sue Ann Jaffarian" a collective pseudonym for authors of varying talents? Was this series actually written before the others?

Baited Blood also reintroduces a meme that became increasingly intrusive in the Odelia Grey mysteries: the dismay of the protagonist and her associates about somehow repeatedly ending up in life-or-death situations. Any reader of amateur detective mysteries is prepared to suspend disbelief, at least to some extent, about this inevitable story feature -- but not if s/he's hammered over the head with it.

I still managed to enjoy much of the book, and to become interested in the characters, particularly the POV character, Madison Rose. I'll probably keep reading the series -- without expecting too much.
4625382
While I love historical romances, this book just never seemed to find it's own voice. It seemed as though it was written by someone who has read a lot of historic romances and longed to be an author of one. Not enough time was devoted to any deep understanding of either the present day heroine or the past. In fact, the plot was very similar to a novel by Susanna Kearsley called 'Winter Sea' (an excellent and engaging book, by the way). Additionally, spelling mistakes and typos abound, which only contributes to the sense of amateurishness which pervades this book. I wanted to like it, but I felt the author just wants to reader to like her. A mediocre novel, at best.
2177059
I'd been hearing good things about this book and after following the author's blog, I figured why not give this one a go. Unfortunately I was rather disappointed. The biggest let down for me was the writing style. I found it very difficult to engage with at times. Particularly at the start, where it seemed to jump point of view mid-paragraph without much notice. Too many pronouns were often thrown around making it difficult to tell what applied to whom. There were also a lot of unnecessary descriptions that threw off the flow. Countless times characters would scratch their chin, rub their eyes, sigh, slap their thigh. Why? Who knows, because it never really added anything other than dead words. It was unnecessary and frustrating at times. On top of that there were a lot of paragraphs, thrown in seemingly at random, with a character's thoughts on something that was completely unrelated to the current action. These all made for a slow and laborious read.

The characters were engaging and unique, the story really plodded along at the beginning and I wasn't too interested in what was happening. It did pick up at a few points, but I found the actual ended a really anti-climax - all the building tension for about three pages of action and an abrupt end! Whilst the epilogue was interesting, it won't be enough to get me to continue this series
4973425
I am torn over where to begin with this review. The author had the makings of a great book here with a promising plot line and what could have been great characters. Unfortunately, especially in the first half of the book involving Mary and Percy, the characterizations are uneven and undeveloped, and the motivations and actions don't make sense. The second half of the book, involving Mary's granddaughter Rachel, is somewhat better in these regards, or maybe I just got used to the author's writing and filled in the blanks for myself. I was astounded to read that Ms. Meacham was a former English teacher, as her use of similes and metaphors is strained and off-putting, and her failure to correctly provide an antecedent for her many pronouns is rampant. Further, some of her sudden leaps in place and time can be pretty confusing, as they are indicated by nothing at all other than all of a sudden someone else is speaking or the action is taking place somewhere unrelated to what came immediately before.  Maybe these missteps were present because I was reading an ARC, and they will be corrected in the final version of the book. I can only hope so, both for Ms. Meacham's sake and the sake of her future readers. A good editor would have been a godsend for this version that I received.

All that said, I was held by the storyline and the suspense until the last page, and I was never tempted to put the book down and not finish it. I think Ms. Meacham does capture the ambiance of small-town Texas (I grew up in a small town in West Texas myself) and it's entirely believable that there were two or three "ruling" families with immense wealth and property and also great respect from the town. She reveals the secrets of these families in a convincing manner and maintains plenty of suspense along the way. My earlier comments about characterization refer primarily to the fact that the actions of the characters are not sufficiently explained by what we've come to know and understand about them. For example, Mary's willingness to accept the vagaries of fate and not fight for true love does not square with her stubbornness about holding on to Somerset regardless of the consequences. Also, Mary's realistic and straightforward approach to the farm and life in general doesn't lend much credence to her devastating actions taken because of belief in a family curse. Of course, people are complicated and do have blind spots, but somehow the most critical step Mary takes is never justified at all by anything we've come to know about her. And Rachel's final decision regarding her law suit is never explained at all. I've tried to avoid any spoilers in the preceding but I felt that I needed to justify my own statements by giving a few examples.

I also think some family genealogy charts would have been helpful to remember who's in what generation and their relation to the rest of the family.

I hope the final published version of this book will have taken care of all my misgivings, and with that in mind, I recommend this book to anyone who likes a multi-generational tale of passion, suspense, and tragedy.
3607779
I usually try very hard to find something good to say about every book I review; however, I found little to recommend about J.F. Penns Stone of Fire book. Its free; the concept is interestingdid I mention that its free?

Despite all the hype that Ms. Penn issues regarding her novels, I was far from impressed with this book. The premise was interesting: stones from the Pentecost that might contain mystical powers. However, the writing was less than stellarin fact, it was barely adequate.

During the first third of the book, the plot and story were so thin that the framework she was building for the book was easily visible. It was like sitting in the audience of an amateur drama and watching the actors mill around while the stage hands pushed and pulled the various sets around. The characters were undefined and unclear as was the plot and the story. Someone told her she needed to have something dramatic happen in chapters 1, 3 and 5, so she focused on making that occur, whether those occurrences worked within the framework she was struggling to build or not.

About mid-point, the author finally seemed to have figured out the plot and the story started to come together. Unfortunately, she still hadnt defined her characters. In fact, they were so ill-defined that she couldn't even keep the POV straight. A paragraph would start out with Morgans POV (the female protagonist) but end with Jakes (the male protagonist). And if the author cant tell one character from another, how are we, the readers, supposed to? The mixed POVs continued throughout the rest of the book, leaving me distanced and struggling to care about these characters at all. The only character that the author seemed to know and understand, and that I enjoyed, was the clergyman, Ben. However, we only got his POV for about one chapter.

In the last third of the book, Ms. Penn seemed to have finally figured out the basics of storytelling; however, she still couldn't seem to determine whose POV she was using as we drifted from head to head, sometimes even mid-sentence. The ending was as weak as the overall book was poorly written. And the author added an addendum, which was her way of fixing the story so that it could become a series.

Overall, I would give this story a half-star (if only for its original premise), but since thats not allowed in Amazon or Goodreads, I will give it one star with the note that it is half a star too much.
434164
Never judge a book by its cover. I loved the title of this book and felt it might be an indication of the author's creativity and cleverness. It was not. The underdeveloped characters and paint-by-numbers plot offer just a couple reasons to pass on this novel. Mercifully brief, I did read the book to its conclusion, but asked myself at many points along the way if this was adequate reason to continue on. In retrospect, the quality of the book did not justify the investment of this reader's time.
45699
Sadly, this was a very poor effort from an author who has penned one of my favorite pastiches - that is, 'Gods of War'. It did have its strong points, namely, a well written mystery with an intriguing, if slightly veneer, plot. It was fun, and at times clever, but its problems were numerous and glaring.

I am one of those rather stodgy individuals who looks askance at authors who take blatant liberties with characterizations, and found both the portrayals of Holmes and Watson to be on shaky ground, not only their "voices", but in regards to their interactions with one another. Both acted in ways that their canon counterparts never would have, and this was particularly glaring in one early scene where Holmes, an Victorian gentlemen to his core - if an unconventional, Bohemian one - makes deductions intended to be personally hurtful to a rival reporter.

It was an awful scene that made the great detective appear to be a pretentious, self-absorbed man who uses his intelligence amorally, and one the true Sherlock Holmes as penned by Arthur Conan Doyle would have been rightfully disgusted by.

While there were some vivid descriptions of Oxford, the entirety of this book lacked believable Victorian prose, often fell into blatant anachronisms, and contained not a shred of atmosphere denoting it took place in the 19th century.

What ultimately did this book in, however, was its seemingly rushed, comic book ending that defied my suspension of disbelief beyond its limits. Without delving into spoilery content, I will suffice it to say that it was not so much who was behind the conspiracy that was so far beyond credulity, but more along the lines of how this character was presented that came off as... asinine. The entire denouement scene and the way in which the book hurriedly comes to its unsatisfying end combined to make this not really a forgettable book, but one I should very dearly hope to forget.
1605693
This author's books are not so good they deserve twice or more per book. I am giving this a one star for the rip off that it is.
1319046
I have been a long-time fan of the author--since Fingersmith, in fact. I have liked some of her books better than others, with Fingersmith remaining my favorite. So The Paying Guests comes as a deep disappointment. It is overwrought and lugubrious, with central characters it is very hard to care about. Ironically, I found the secondary characters more alive, more viable than Frances and Lilian, the primaries. Leonard, the husband, and Lilian's family, all breathe deeply, bubbling with energy, and step off the pages. But Frances and Lilian are a tiresome duo and 560 pages of their few ups and many, many downs make for difficult reading.

The Paying Guests are at Frances's home because there is a great need for the income they bring to her and her widowed mother. But aside from an early mention of what that cash represents, and given that the money is so badly needed, it seems a most serious omission to go close to 500 pages before it is mentioned again.

Frances's endless internal anguishing becomes hard to take. This is a woman who lacks very little degree of lightness or humor. She just can't get outside of her own head. And Lilian is something of a cipher. The view of her character seems to change depending on Frances's whims and moods. There are moments when things jolt to life, most notably the confrontation scene between Lilian, her husband Len, and Frances. There is great tension in this encounter but it is soon overwhelmed by the massive weight of pages and pages of interior description.

Having looked at the other reviews, I'm kind of amazed to see this book referred to as a "thriller," and as possessed of the makings of a Masterpiece Mystery. We can't have read the same 560-odd pages. This novel would have been better served by more stringent editing, cutting away some of the endless tours through Frances's mental maundering so that the narrative drive was stronger and sharper. As it stands, this book is slow-going--truly a slog to get to the end.
4124537
Once again, I am astounded with the over-the-top reviews. This was not the worst book I have ever read; there was pretty good flow to the story and natural dialogue most of the time. However, how anyone could consider this book to be "superb" or "absolutely brilliant" is a much greater mystery to me than this flawed who-done-it.
Consider:
1) the profound implausibility of an initial suspect becoming a member of the investigative team to the point of being informed about EVERTHING related to the case
2) when this person is caught using some of the privileged info to help the primary suspect evade law enforcement, the result is that she is asked to play an even more active role in the investigation
3) no reader can guess who committed the crime because the author does not develop the story in a way that would possibly lead to him.
4) there is no justification for the two protagonists immediately and strongly bonding.

There are other flaws and inconsistencies throughout, such as Stacie being in exactly the wrong place at the right time to just happen to hear conversation that supposedly relates to the case and characters thrown into the story for no good reason, with some of them literally changing overnight.
2103760
This book was a big disappointment to me - I had really been looking forward to and enjoyed other books by this author. I will admit I set a lower bar for this genre, but this didn't even measure up to that.  I thought it was quite boring, which was worsened by the lazy, inconsistent writing.  I would skip this but still recommend her other books.