Oops. I totally forgot to finish this and post it. Derp. Sorry about that, folks. Let's just say this week did not start off well for me, with 4 DNFs in a row and with my brainfart, it looks like it ain't finishing up great either. But the middle part was good.
I picked up 6 new ebooks this past week - 2 cozy mysteries, 2 paranormal mysteries, an urban fantasy, and a romance. No new hardcopies.
Books Read:
7) The Side Hustle by Colin Conway (1/20/22) - Suspense* - 5 stars. New to me but not underappreciated. Free off the Reading Deals newsletter.
Review: "Pretty darn good suspense with plenty of intriguing characters. The asides into financial advice were interesting, even if they weren't wholly pertinent to the plot. But I'm a little into that stuff, so I rolled with it. I liked Quinn and Marci. but for me, the star of the show was Kirby. I could see him doing a side hustle as a private investigator in future stories all his own. All in all, I really enjoyed this book as evidenced by how quickly I inhaled it. "
6) The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum by Kirsten Weiss (1/18/22) - Cozy Mystery* - 5 stars. New to me but not underappreciated. Free off the Robin Reads newsletter.
Review: "What a cute and fun mystery. I wouldn't necessarily bill it as a 'paranormal mystery', though. Maybe a 'cozy mystery with supernatural elements'. So if you're going into this expecting one of the characters to be a paranormal creature, this might not be your thing. I started out waiting for the main character to develop some magical capabilities or find out she was a magical being. Nope. Maybe I misunderstood. Anyway... This is a normal gal solving a mystery with some incidental maybe ghosts and ghostly stuff. But I'm okay with that. Like I said, it's cute and it's fun, so well worth the read."
DNFs:
1/16/22 - mystery - free. First off, it was first person, which alone is weird for a mystery. It was also written in a conversational style, which is usually fine. Unfortunately, this was like having a conversation a hyperactive golden retriever. Seems nice enough, but lacks an attention span of any length. And every zip away from the story was a bit of backstory. It was tiring to read, so I stopped.
1/16/22 - UF - free. I want to read a story, not count how many social justice checkboxes the author can hit in the first ten pages. And ya know, I'm old, so constantly mentioning the MC's tattoos and teal hair was a little much. She's got tats... got it and they're critical to the story, so okay, fine, whatever. And she's like super edgy with her oddly-colored locks... got it, but it's not crucial. I don't constantly mention a character's brown hair. Say the color once so the reader has a picture in their heads and let it go. Sheesh.
1/15/22 - paranormal mystery - free. Trying too hard to be edgy and came off as gratuitous crassness. Crass is okay if the writer has a deft hand. This one didn't.
1/15/22 - thriller - free. Billed as a thriller, came off as a detective agency mystery with too much backstory about the detective agency and not enough mystery. Meh.
Currently reading... A fun paranormal romance. I'm more than 50% done, so expect to see more on this next Saturday.
What was on your reading list last week?
Another slow week for me, too. I've checked off 5 books toward my 150 challenge, which puts me still 3 books behind. I'll eventually catch up. Or not.
ReplyDelete5. Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles, #2), Ilona Andrews, Urban Fantasy with shades of romance, a fave author but new-to-me-series. 5 stars. This is the only series by the wife and husband team writing as Ilona Andrews. Two of them (Kate Daniels and Hidden Legacy) are yearly relistens. Her Kinsmen Universe SciFi are relistens, as is her Edge series. For some reason, I just didn't get into this series so I stalled out. Times change, obviously. It's now an autobuy and I have all the books in audio now. I'll get to the worldbuilding and charcters in the next one.
4. Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1), same as above, 4 stars. Premise: Dina Demille is an Innkeeper. Inns are safe havens for cosmostological (aka aliens) visitors. The Inn is magic and has deep ties with their Innkeeper. Dina's parents and their inn disappeared when she was away at college. She and her older brother went searching but there was nothing to find. Her older sister is married to a space vampire. There's a werewolf in the neighborhood with his own issues. There's derring do, a noisy cop because the first rull of Inn Club is that the Inns are SECRET and NOT TO BE REVEALED TO HUMANS upon all sorts of threats of punishment. Anyway, the Gordons (Ilona and Andrew) are master worldbuilders. It took awhile but I'm totally invested in the series now. It's fun stuff if you come across it on sale.
I'm currently several hours into the 3rd book and hope to finish it tomorrow. Then there's one more, featuring Dina's sister Maud, before the final novella. That's all that's been released so far. After that, listening should speed up because I'll be selectively listening to several JD Robb In Death books in anticipation of the new release in early February.
Happy reading all!