One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Night Stalkers, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 416 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Sourcebooks Casablanca publisher Sourcebooks via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





After years of intense work and training, viciously struggling for every hard-earned inch of achievement, Sergeant Kee Smith has finally made it. Using everything from the grim lessons she learned as a kid on the streets to the impact her luscious warrior-woman body has on a man, she has clawed and wrestled and fought for every last bit of progress in her military career, all to get her to one place: SOAR.

The Army's Special Operations Aviation Regiment is the best of the best in the sky, and Kee is driven to not only be the second woman ever to make it into SOAR, but to excel in the deadliest piece of military hardware ever flown, a Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) Black Hawk helicopter.

She's finally made it. She's in SOAR and she's got her DAP Hawk. Okay, she's a little disappointed at the lack of excellence in her team. Sure, she respects team member Lieutenant Archibald Jeffery Stevenson III. Despite the pretentious name, he's a hell of an Army pilot. The fact that he's also a long drink of water who makes her hormones sit up and take notice ain't too shabby either.

The rest of them are just going to have to eat her dust as she shows them what a real female warrior can do in a helicopter.

Problem is, when you're on the front line in a hot zone, missions have a habit of not going according to plan. Kee is in a deadly position in a dangerous world, and simple survival is often dependent on your team. Kee needs to be more than just a hell of a gunner or the best woman in SOAR. She's going to need Archie...and a pretty big attitude adjustment...just to get out alive.


Two books into this series and I'm still surprised and impressed by Buchman's world of brave, loyal military heroes. I'm so glad I didn't let my prejudices about male romance authors and my ambivalence for military-themed romance hold me back from this series. I would have missed out on great characters and thrilling stories.

The beginning of this book worried me, though. I loathed Kee. Frankly, I would've been thrilled if Emily had parked a DAP Hawk on her head. She was an abrasive, obnoxious, ignorant, disrespectful bitch in need of a swift kick in the ass. Every time she referred to Emily as Major Hoity Toity, or dared to be dismissive of the elite force she was fighting beside, I wanted to drop her into a vat of boiling oil.

Of course, one of the reasons she offended me so much was because she mocked the heroes Buchman introduced in the first book, heroes I love as much as I loved their story. Seems to me, hating Kee for that is more a credit to the job Buchman did bringing those characters to life than a condemnation of Kee's character.

Well...okay, it can be both.

Kee is deeply wounded and insecure despite her achievements, and she wears Bitch like a flak jacket to hide those insecurities. She has some serious self respect issues and gets defensive with anyone who has had an easier life than she has - and in her mind, that's just about everyone. The chip on her shoulder is an RPG. On the flip side, she is also intensely honorable and a real straight shooter, even at her own expense. By the end, thankfully, and with a lot of help from Archie, I liked her.

Archie was not what I normally prefer for my romance heroes. Alpha male he definitely is not. Intelligent, awkward with women, polite and moneyed, he's more genteel gentleman than kick-ass warrior. A romantic suspense anomaly. While I can't say he hit the same Happy Reader buttons that Major Mark "Viper" Henderson did in the first book, I will say that I completely appreciated him as a change of pace in the genre, and liked him very much as a character.

I liked Kee and Archie as a couple very much, too.

The plot was lighter on suspense than the first book. That wasn't as appealing to me, but I can't argue that Buchman writes a hell of a tale. The suspense inherent in wartime operations is what drives those elements of the plot and Buchman does it extremely well. He imbues every scene with an air of authenticity and realism that is, at times, truly terrifying. It was much more believable as a story than the plotline of the previous book, if perhaps not quite as entertaining on a personal level.

I've become quite a fan of this series and the characters in it. Every element is just damn good. Even those things that annoy or frustrate me, or characters who really rub me raw, work well within the framework of the story and the world of the series. Things like the extensive military jargon, which is often hard for me to follow, lends itself to the feeling of authenticity. And Kee, who infuriated and offended me at every turn in the beginning, was still someone very easy to imagine in the real world. That's adroit storytelling, and it provided a well-balanced, solid, entertaining read. I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series.


The Night Stalkers Series:

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Colbana Files, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 257 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided by publisher Shiloh Walker, Inc. via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





It's not like Kit Colbana is happy to take a job for the alpha of the cat shifters. There are a lot easier ways to die if she were feeling that suicidal. Even though her small business is light on cases lately and she's feeling the pinch financially, she would have turned the job down flat, no matter how lucrative the proffered fee. But the job is finding a runaway kid, and Kit, part private investigator, sometime thief, preferred courier, resolute bounty hunter, and even occasional assassin, has a genuine soft spot for cases concerning kids.

She also has a true gift for finding things. It's in her half-breed blood. Kit's father may have been human but her mother had been full-blooded aneira, a race of ancient warriors versed in magic. Her blood gives Kit a unique set of skills perfectly suited for finding things like a lost cat shifter kid. And when her investigation into his disappearance reveals that there are more children missing, it also gives her the ability to stop those responsible.

Well...she hopes it will, anyway, as Kit has no intention of stopping until either she's dead, or the monster responsible for the kidnapping and murdering of children is. It's just her bad luck that her human half tends to be a lot easier to kill than any of the baddies she's going to be facing on this case. Life sucks that way.


J.C. Daniels, nom de plume of prolific author Shiloh Walker, kicks off her urban fantasy series debut with a strong, stubborn heroine with a smart mouth and a lot of confidence in her own deadly skills. The world of the Colbana Files drew me in, exciting and intriguing me from the first page, and the setting, being a Florida girl myself, had great appeal.

I liked Kit. She's maybe a bit typical for the genre, a kick-ass, sarcastic warrior woman whose mouth writes checks her oft-abused body ends up cashing, but she's amusing, especially when she's picking at Damon, and her hyper-vigilant caution around creatures who could so easily end her keeps her real. She's a troublemaker, surely, and man, she's abrasive at times. She's also deeply damaged by a torturous childhood that still haunts her and tends to rush headlong into danger, but she's also got a code of honor and is loyal to those very few people she trusts. I actually liked her very much, even when she was frustrating me.

I can't say the same for Damon, the cat shifter who practically glues himself to Kit's side while she's on the case. Well, I could, but it would be a gross understatement. I loved him. Loved. Him. He's all kinds of sly, dark danger and secretive, stalking seduction. He's the complete package and I adored every shiver-worthy second of every scene he was in.

The character dynamic between him and Kit was great, and while there was also a plot thread of romance there...eventually...I can't say it was my favorite element of the read. It was just a little odd for me. That there was a thread of romance at all, though, did appeal. Call me a big softy but I prefer at least some romance in almost everything I read.

That's not to say I'm a fan of the ubiquitous love triangle. In fact, I have little patience and less tolerance for anything even vaguely resembling a love triangle. I was a little worried about the vampire Jude at times because of that. Worried, and then surprised as the plot progressed, reached the climax of the conflict, and resolved. His presence in the book didn't evolve into what I was worried it was going to evolve into, I'm happy to say, but I was definitely affected by his character in the story. And that's all I'm able to say without risking spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.

Some elements of the read weren't as successful for me as others. The characters and story as a whole were solid, the well-drawn world full of plenty of deadly threat, but I had some issues with info dumping in the beginning and the ending felt rushed to me. And I'm still not sure I completely bought the motivation and actions of the Bad Guy in relation to the hunting. Sure, the guy was evil incarnate, but I still can't figure out why he did some of the things he did..

In truth, those issues were relatively minor and didn't take away much from my enjoyment in this read. I just liked Kit and Damon too much, and their story excited me. I've struggled with several urban fantasy series I've tried lately, but this one held its appeal throughout the tale. With a damaged but likable heroine I appreciate and a dark world full of danger at every turn, this debut gives me hope that I've found a new urban fantasy series that will provide chills and thrills for a long time to come. I look forward to being along for the ride.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Zebra publisher Kensington Publishing Corp. via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Little Livvie Dugan remembers a lot about her sixth birthday. She remembers blowing out the birthday candles on the cake her mama got for her. She remembers opening presents, and getting to watch lots of cartoons. She remembers falling asleep in the den with the television on. It was a great day...until she woke up and went into the kitchen for another piece of cake. That's when little Livvie remembers finding her mama hanging by her neck, her face all purple and puffy and her tongue lolling from her mouth.

Livvie doesn't remember much of anything else for a long time after that.

Twenty years later, Olivia Dugan still bears the scars from her childhood, scars that no amount of therapy can erase. They've shaped her into a quiet, reserved woman who stays off the grid, and haunted her with nightmares and a lingering sense of being stalked. Still, she's getting by, until she gets a package from her mother, a package sent two decades after she committed suicide. A package that begs far more questions than it answers and opens far more wounds than it heals.

And when Liv slips out of work one afternoon to pick up a quick bite of lunch and comes back to a bloodbath of mind-shattering proportions, she is terrified that the package from a woman long dead has put her in the crosshairs of a killer. And maybe there is even more to little Livvie's memories of a horrific night twenty years ago than she's let herself remember.


As a twisted, complex, disturbing psychological thriller, this book hits all the right notes for me. The heroine, Liv Dugan, is one of the most damaged and broken characters I've read lately, and as odd as this makes me, I loved that about her. Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say I appreciated it, because she was a quintessential product of a truly traumatic childhood. In short, she was believable in her role, and her manic paranoia and edge-of-sanity actions set the tone of the frenetic race to identify and stop the monster terrorizing her.

There is a lot going on in this book. The timeline is a bit jerky and there are a lot of different characters to keep track of, so some parts were a little hard for me to follow in places. I can't say I totally bought into the introduction of Auggie, either. His behavior wasn't exactly what I'd call professional and his connection to September strained my willing suspension of disbelief. Overall, though, this is a layered, grim, freaky thriller that kept me riveted from cover to cover. And the reveal of the Bad Guy completely blew me away. I did not see that one coming at all.

As out of left field as it was, it completely worked, and all those niggling little bits of seemingly random story detritus so carefully doled out from the very beginning coalesced into a horrifyingly shocking snapshot of insidious evil by the end.  Disturbing, maybe, also effective and intelligently done.

I wish this hadn't been labeled as a romantic suspense, though. For all that Liv was a great main character, and her damage made her realistic and believable, I don't think it made her a great romantic heroine. She was just a little too broken for me to really engage with her in a romantic role. I liked Auggie quite a lot, and I liked them working together, but I kept wishing she wasn't quite as unbalanced as she was, or that the relationship between them had evolved a little differently. I just couldn't get a grasp on them as a couple, not for where Liv was when their relationship started, anyway.

It was the biggest stumbling block of the read for me, and that, along with some of the stylistic elements that tripped me up here and there throughout the story, kept this from being a solid win for me as a romantic suspense. That doesn't diminish my frank appreciation and admiration of the book as a taut, seat-of-your-pants, gut-kicking psychological thriller. In that regard, it's one of the better ones I've read recently, and one I think fans of the genre would enjoy.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Lucky Harbor, Book 6
Rating: 5 Stars
Length: 324 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Four months in Lucky Harbor has netted banking specialist Grace Brooks two best friends and a town she adores, but it's still falling short in the career department. Though she takes as many odd jobs as she can get while she searches for one in her field, her savings account is really feeling the pinch of her extended not-quite-vacation. Surely that's the only reason she doesn't correct the delectable Dr. Josh Scott, dreamiest of the McDreamies, when he misdials a number for a dog walker and calls her instead.

She really does need the money, and honestly, how hard can walking one dog be?

Single father, town doctor, brother of a troubled young woman in a wheelchair, Josh has gotten used to wearing a lot of hats in his life, but lately the weight of all his many responsibilities is grinding him down to the bone. Coming home to deal with one more in a long string of catastrophes surrounding his son's dog Tank is just the tip of a very large iceberg. He wasn't expecting to be poleaxed by a soaking wet and distraught Grace, who was still in the ocean searching for the dog she thought she lost.

She may be the worst dog walker on the planet, but there's just something about the woman that brings Josh to his knees. She obviously needs help, and that's what Josh does, he helps...everyone but himself. But maybe, if Josh can loosen up a bit, and Grace can let go and have fun for a change, they'll both find exactly what they need, and more than they ever dreamed possible, with each other.

Okay, so maybe chocolate doesn't make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.

Six books into the Lucky Harbor series and I just gotta say, I want to live there. Seriously, I would totally move there if I could. Like each book in the series, the town is wacky, weird, and unrepentantly wonderful. Filled with a colorful mix of salty and spicy and sweet characters I've come to adore, Lucky Harbor is the perfect backdrop for each installment of this delightful series. And Grace and Josh's book is my favorite of the lot of them.

Feels like I keep saying that, though, with each new book. Funny how that works.

Speaking of funny, Shalvis baked a batch of giggles, snorts, and chuckles into this one. Grace was an absolute riot, and Josh was such a fabulous straight man opposite her charming blunders. I loved both of them, and the chemistry they had together was spectacular. More than just sexual chemistry, they had a genuine way of interacting that just tickled every single one of my Happy Reader buttons.

I loved how their lives slowly intertwined as the story progressed. Yes, they were totally hot for each other, and it was stellar, but equally enjoyable were the family moments, seeing Grace's influence slowly alter the whole Scott family in heartwarming ways. Josh may have been paying her, but the impact she has on his life, on the lives of his sister and son, all of it, just made me feel good.

The whole book made me feel good. I wanted to gobble Toby up every time he said "arf," and Anna was a complicated, realistic terror. Best friends Amy and Mallory were included in nice ways - not overshadowing Grace and Josh time but adding their own well-known and loved personalities to the story. Matt and Ty were there, too, as Josh's best friends. I loved revisiting them and seeing how happy they all are. It's one of my favorite things about romance series and Shalvis did an excellent job incorporating them as secondary characters. She even included - mostly by mention - the characters from the first three books. It added a layer of continuity to this one that I didn't feel as strongly in the previous two stories.

There just isn't anything that didn't work for me in this book. I thought Grace's issues with her parents and Josh's concerns with being a good father and brother added nice layers of personal conflict for both characters. The storyline evolved very naturally around them and those issues added a pleasant level of depth to their relationship.

There were a lot of different elements written into this book, some even struck more somber notes, yet it still managed to be a light, decadent, sexy romantic treat. This is exactly why Shalvis is one of my top go-to authors for feel-good romance. She writes characters that become old friends and stories that touch my heart even as they entertain my mind. She's done that in every book in this series, some to greater effect than others, but this one exceeds them all.

Grace and Josh's romance really is the hot, gooey, sinfully delicious chocolate on top of a fantastic Lucky Harbor sundae. And I truly can't wait to take another bite.

Quotables:

She didn't look ridiculous at all. She looked the opposite of ridiculous. In fact, she looked good enough to gobble up with a spoon. Without a spoon. He was thinking his tongue would work...

"You have more spiders?"
"No," he said without missing a beat. "No spiders."
"You said spiders," she said. "And I saw a big one in the side yard, in the sprinkler well."
"That spider went south for the winter."
"It's summer."
"He wanted to be the first to get out of town."

Ty pointed his beer at Josh. "Want to know what I think?"
"No," Josh said.
"I think you have a case of being a little girl. Maybe you should prescribe yourself a heavy dose of man-the-fuck-up."

Unfortunately, he was a man through and through, and therefore had a penis, which meant that there'd be no reasoning with him.

The Lucky Harbor Series:

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Jane True, Book 1
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 359 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle





Jane True has always known she's not quite like everyone else in her hometown of Rockabill, Maine. That whole penchant for nighttime ocean swims in the dead of winter sort of clued her off on that. She never imagined, however, that her heritage was truly the stuff of legend.

When Jane is out for one of her nightly dips, she discovers a body in the water near her personal private cove. The grisly find blows Jane's world off its axis, and the investigation into the man's death will not only reveal what Jane really is, but it will thrust her into a world of myth and supernatural phenomena. It's a world as deadly as it is beautiful, and it's more a home for Jane than any Maine backwater could ever be.

Or it will be, if she can survive it.


This is one of those books in one of those series that I'd heard about again and again but never picked up for myself. It was oft recommended to me by friends and search engines alike based on my reading preferences and  history, but I delayed reading for one reason or another. Now I feel a little late to the party, but I'm glad I finally showed up.

Peeler has created a rich, vibrant world with this series debut. I loved Jane's voice, and appreciated the depth and texture of the town and its inhabitants, human and extraordinary alike. Everything was crisp and sharp and brilliantly original.

I wasn't quite as big a fan of the plot of the story. As a mostly character-driven tale, the external plot conflict got a little lost in the minutia of Jane's life and burgeoning knowledge of the world around her. As a reader, I appreciate superlative storytelling, but my preference is for a more plot-driven story. For me, the pacing got bogged down by details of everything Jane feels, thinks, wears, sees, and smells, and it made parts of the book very tedious to plod through.

The last fifteen percent, though, was spectacular, and I loved Jane and Ryu together. Though, to be completely honest, I'm sort of yearning for more Anyan. I'm not even remotely a fan of the ubiquitous love triangle in urban fantasy, and I definitely felt one was stirring here, if only by implication, but I'm already rooting for Anyan and Jane.

Or maybe I should say, I'll be rooting for them in absentia. As much as I appreciated this book and am heartily glad I finally read it, I don't know that I'll continue with the series. That's nothing at all against this book or the series, it's strictly a personal preference in my reading. For fans of character-driven urban fantasy with a quirky and adorable heroine, this is absolutely a must-read book. I just need a little more focus on plot-driven conflict.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Dark Dynasties, Book 3
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 361 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





He's a thief. He's an assassin. He's a dissolute rogue. As a Cait Sith and Shade of the House of Shadows, Damien Tremaine is all those things. Mostly though, he's really bloody bored with his long, long life.

The contract to find a missing member of the House of the mysterious - and freaky - Grigori at least provides a bit of a challenge. And if he's lucky, an opportunity to poke someone with something sharp. That's always fun.

Sure, he'd been informed of a rogue female Grigori roaming around, but if he's not getting paid for it, he has no interest in a female who probably resembles her obscenely large and ridiculously manly brethren. Then he actually meets the woman, and even as she's endeavoring to separate his head from his shoulders, Damien is struck dumb by her ethereal beauty and fierce determination. Suddenly boredom is a thing of the past and he can't stop purring long enough to convince her to stop trying to kill him.

All Ariane wants to do is find the only friend she's had in her centuries-long existence. She's fled her desert home and broken most of the Grigori's stringent rules, all in the hopes of locating Sammael. She's certainly not going to let some gorgeous but lowborn, cat-shifting vampire impede her on her quest. Even if she has no leads, no contacts, and no way of knowing where to find either.

He could use her knowledge of her people to aid him in his search. She could use his connections and his experience with a world from which she's been completely sheltered. And when a dark, insidious secret of the Grigori comes to light, a secret they've hidden from the world at large until it's poised to rise up and destroy them all, they will need each other more than either one of them could have ever dreamed...just to survive.


Only three books in and this series is already one of my favorites in paranormal romance, and this book is my favorite of the three. I am a total sucker for antiheroes, and Damien is just my kind of bad, bad boy. Snarky, irreverent, cynical, shallow with the capacity for casual cruelty, he's also loyal and honorable in his own way, and he's his own harshest critic.

And when he meets Ariane and turns into a big purring mess, I was totally sunk. I adored him.

Ariane was great, too, though she's not quite my preferred type in the genre. Her naivety, innocence, and lack of experience didn't thrill me. Combined, they made her character strike a little too close to the virginal heroines most often found in historical romance, but Castle balanced her with the kick-ass fighting skills of a warrior and gave her a pair of killer wings (I love wings). And her easy acceptance (once she stopped trying to skewer him, anyway) of the flawed, complicated Damien endeared me to her quite a lot.

The chemistry between them was instant and hot, and I loved how their relationship evolves as the plot progresses. Though the heat between them was fast, there was quite a lot of natural contention in their relationship at first, and as the story progressed, their partnership grew into a strong romance in a nicely organic fashion.

One of the greatest things about this series in general and this book in particular is the robust the world building, layered plot, and fantastic ancillary elements. The poor, maligned Cait Sith make wonderfully original protagonists. They are all so flawed and damaged, rife with internal conflicts that add delicious layers to their individual characters and subsequent romance arcs. Damien was a perfect addition to their ranks.

I loved finding out more about the Grigori, too. They've been mentioned before in the series but not much was known about them. The revelations were quick, rich, and fabulously intriguing once Ariane was introduced, and the mythos surrounding them built throughout the narrative, creating the foundation for the external conflict and cascading into a shocking climax.

The ending did feel a little abrupt to me, and even after rereading the denouement, I'm not entirely sure what happened, or how things ended up the way they did. There was a big climactic scene, then it was over and the dust settled, but the fallout was noted, not explained. I found it odd that no one questioned it, and I'm still not clear on how the good guys came out on top or what made the bad guys' ending so...simultaneous and inclusive. Perhaps that will be revisited in a later book, but it left me with several questions in this one.

That was the only issue I had with the story, however, and frankly, it didn't really dim the glow all that much. I just love this series and the characters in it who I've come to know and appreciate. One of my favorite secondary characters, Vlad, is in quite a lot of this book, too, so I was all kinds of happy while I was reading. In fact, with two excellent main characters, a fantastic romance, great surrounding story with an entire stable of memorable secondary characters, and just enough plot threads left untied to guarantee more fun reading in future books, what's not to love?

Quotables:

He was charming, damn it! She was supposed to notice!

"Unless I'm missing something important, yes, the man is dead," Damien finally replied. "I think his head is over there behind the desk, if you need further proof. Are you finished being overly dramatic yet?"
"His head?" The vampire gave a pitiful moan, his eyes rolling.
"Ah, apparently not. Lovely."

Ariane reached behind her and drew her blade.
And not just any blade. It was the sort of sword no vampire had any business carrying. The sort of sword that said, "I am ancient and terrible and I don't have time to let those who annoy me live."

"So this is how it ends for me. Afflicted with a plague of Grigori. If anyone else around here grows wings, I'm going to stab them in the head and light them on fire. I've had it."

Dark Dynasties Series: