Ariana Forsythe is a deeply religious woman living in the English countryside, who is sent to London to stay with her aunt. While there, she meets Philip Mornay, an unpleasant man who is clearly intended to remind the reader of Mr Darcy. A scandalous rumour about Ariana means Phillip is the only person who can help her, and as she spends more time with him, she realises they can never be together, because he doesn’t share her faith.

The author has never heard of the phrase “Show, don’t tell,” or she considers the reader to need everything spelled out in minute detail. Ariana is not the eldest in her family, but she is having her debut before her older sister. The older sister makes a lighthearted joke about Ariana’s journey to London. The author then feels the need to explain that this joke means the sister is alright with Ariana going to London before her.

This happens throughout the book, a character says or does something, then the author explains what this means, even when it is blindingly obvious. It’s incredibly annoying and really takes from the story.

It is obvious that a lot of research went into this book, which is fabulous. The only problem is, the author then feels the need to let the reader know just how much work went into the book by filling it with irrelevant and boring details, mostly about clothing.

The book largely follows the same outline as Pride and Prejudice, with Ariana’s faith and Phillip’s lack thereof being the largest source of tension.

Phillip is a great, believable character, with a great backstory which explains why he’s so disdainful of pretty much everyone. Even when he is softened by Ariana, he is not entirely changed, and remains disdainful towards some people.

Ariana, on the otherhand, seems a little inconsistent. While in the English countryside, she is willing to marry a much older, wholly unsuitable man, simply because he is a priest, which is why her father agrees to send her to London. Then, there is practically no mention of her faith until Phillip, when she remembers she incredibly devout.

This book is incredibly preachy. I knew it was a Christian book, but this was my first one, and it has put me off the entire genre. I’m an atheist, but I would read a Christian book if it was a good story. However, if they’re all like this, I’m done with them. Ariana described her aunt- who believes in God, but enjoys socialising, and doesn’t going to church every Sunday- as a heathen. More than once. I’m not entirely sure if she was joking, but if she wasn’t, I’d love to know what Ariana would think of me, a devout atheist who hasn’t been inside a church in years, and even then it’s only for funerals and weddings.

It is instantly apparent that the author is American; there are far too many Britishisms, more than any British person would actually use, and then towards the end of the book, the phrase “write him,” pops in, whereas pretty much everyone except the Americans uses the phrase “write to him.” (This is actually a pet hate of mine!)

I can’t say I’d recommend this book, but pretty much every other review I’ve read of it was positive, so clearly I’m in the minority. Perhaps it is a great book, it just doesn’t do anything for me.

A Girl And Her Cat is set in the United States, and opens with a zombie attack, witnessed by a young girl and her father. After her father turns, the young girl, Thalia, is forced to survive with her cat Fiona. Somewhat conveniently, her father taught her how to shoot, build fires, trap food, find water etc.

Meanwhile, ex-Marine Jack is hiding out in a farmhouse, wondering why he’s bothering to survive, and contemplating the pointless of war.

Inevitably, the two meet, and band together against the hordes of undead. They make their way towards a Marine base, which they’ve been told is a safe haven for survivors.

It’s a relatively good idea, ruined by poor writing, which is further let down by a complete lack of editing. A few typos in a book is forgiveable, but this book is riddled with them. I don’t think there’s a single hyphen in the book, the words ‘where’ and ‘were’ are constantly mixed up;  the errors go beyond simple typos to full-on grammatical and syntax errors which render passages barely intelligble.

The third-person narration switches between past and present tense in about a dozen locations. There are no italics or quotation marks to distinguish between narration and a character’s thoughts, so it’s often very difficult to tell which is which, and the book reads as the author’s rant against religion and war.

The characters’ journey to and life at the survivors’ camp is a great idea- the quest for these camps is a feature in the majority of zombie films and books. Unfortunately, stilted narration and dialogue make the book very difficult to read.

The book opens inside the mind of a man about to become a zombie- the implication is that this is Zombie 0. The passion and intensity isn’t there though, and the writing lets down what should be a scary, intense passage.

The characters are simply bizarre. Thalia possesses some kind of magical/spiritual power, inherited from her mother and grandfather who are Native American. Her power manifests itself simply as strong empathy, until a crucial moment when she conveniently develops deadly skills. Thalia is a sweet, innocent child who happens to be incredibly skilled at survival, until it benefits the story for her to be sly and ruthless.

Jack swings back and forth between hating war and desperately wanting to help his fellow Marines. He often muses on the pointlessness of war, but that doesn’t stop him participating in it. The book reads like a polemic against war, then against consumerism (the zombies seem to be a metaphor for people who mindlessly consume material goods), then against religion (the zombies also act as a metaphor for people driven to bloodlust by their religious beliefs), part discussion of the honour and glory of the Marine Corps. Really, there are too many things going on in the book, and the poor writing does none of them justice.

This review has been cross-posted on Amazon and Goodreads.

Despite the fact that Spicer is smoking hot, Meredith won’t let herself get involved with him, partly because he’s younger than her, partly because she believes she’s a jinx, after losing two husbands.

Her damaged public persona means dating Kelly may be the only thing that can save her career, though.

There was good sexual tension throughout the book, though no explicit sex scenes. The dialogue between Meredith and Kelly was very good, if a little cutesy.

The secondary characters, like Meredith’s friends, are a little caricature-ish, and Kelly can be a little too cowboy at times. Meredith’s friends exist solely to provide her with makeovers, bug her for details about Kelly and push them towards each other.

Although there is a magic cookbook, it features very little, as does Kelly’s sister and her dealings with Meredith as she copes with losing her husband.

Although it’s a romance, so obviously the two will end up together, I never once believed in the tension between them, I never believed either of them were truly angry/upset with the other.

When they do end up together, it’s a very traditional cliched way (SPOILER: They get married, despite saying throughout the book that they never want to get married). I like romance novels with no babies and no marriage, probably just because that’s how I’m put together.

It’s a fun, fast, undemanding read, with just the right amount of magic.

Between FBI agent Alan Stevens, Midnight and Devereux himself, Kismet slowly begins to question her own beliefs, helped in no small part by the fact that an ancient vampire is murdering his way right towards her.

The opening of this book is slow. The author tries to tease the reader with Devereux, but I was just frustrated. Once the story gets going though, it’s fast-paced and action-packed.

I loved Kismet’s doubt about the vampires. Some reviews I’ve read said it was annoying, but really, how easily would any of us accept the existence of immortal, blood-sucking creatures?

Unfortunately, this inability to believe in vampires doesn’t stop her sleeping with Devereux, a client she believes to be mentally ill.

I also loved that Kismet continued to work and see clients all through the book. Too many female characters seem to suspend their lives entirely when they meet the love interest. Unfortunately, this sometimes equates to a boring couple of pages, as we see Kismet deal with non-vampire clients.

Kismet is a great character, with a back story which unfortunately is only hinted at in a session with Kismet’s psychologist- it’s never really elaborated on.

The secondary characters fall a little flat. Everything we read about FBI Agent Stevens, for example, is revealed through Kismet’s narration, not through his own words or actions.

This book walks the line between urban fantasy and paranormal, thanks to Kismet’s apparent ‘powers’. She gets impressions and feelings from people, which seemed completely superfluous to the plot until the crucial moment in the plot. There’s also quite a bit of magic- protection rituals and the like, which all progressed the plot, but which personally I don’t love. It makes sense in the book, I’m just not a fan of magic (which is why I gave up on the Women of the Otherworld series, which started so brilliantly).

There was too much in this book that wasn’t explained or elaborated on- like Kismet’s backstory, without which she can come across like a seriously woman with low self-esteem who suddenly invites relative strangers back to her house to shower with her. It’s a little illogical. Alan Stevens as a character had real potential, as did the love triangle between him, Kismet and Devereux, which was also never elaborated on.

The story was great, the writing was good, but there were just a few too many disappointments for me to consider reading the second book.

This review has been crossposted on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and GoodReads.

*FTC disclosure; I was given a free copy of this book by the publishers*

Nora Dearly returns home from her fancy private boarding school for the Christmas holidays, only to be attacked, and subsequently rescued, by zombies, including the remarkably alive-looking Captain Abraham (Bram) Griswold.

After a period of panic and worry, Nora decides to trust these undead soldiers, and Bram begins to explain why she was attacked, why she was rescued and the history of his undead army.

Nora’s decision to trust the zombies is very realistic. Too often, charaters in paranormal books scream in horror at the zombies/vampires/werewolves, then seem to shrug their shoulders and simply accept the existence of impossible monsters. Nora struggles with the news, and struggles to trust the zombies, even after she leaves the room she locked herself into, and decides to socialise with them.

The backstory of how this new world came about is told as Nora writes a history paper for school. Thanks to climate change, wars and mass migration, survivors set up in Central and South America, deeming their world New Victoria, and adopting the customs and morals of Victorian society.

Habel also answers every possible question about the zombies as Bram explains it all to Nora.

The balance between old and new, futuristic and Victorian, was a little skewed, particularly towards the end of the book, when it became easy to forget that this is a steampunk novel.

The novel is narrated by five different characters, though it is written in the first-person. Personally, I don’t like multiple POVs combined with first-person narration, as it’s too difficult to get right. Habel doesn’t get it right. The voices aren’t sufficiently unique, and even with the announcement at the start of each chapter of who often found myself wondering which uses on, I often found myself wondering which character was narrating.

Some characters added very little to the book. The chapters narrated by Pamela (Nora’s best friend, left behind in New London), for example, didn’t offer anything of benefit to the plot until three quarters of the way through the book. The book would have been much better if it had just been written from Bram and Nora’s points of view.

The romance between Bram and Nora is genuinely sweet and touching and romantic. Given that zombies only have about five years before they truly decompose (and Bram has already been undead for two years) it will be interesting to see how the relationship plays out over the course of the series.

Needless to say, the engagement was called off, and they haven’t seen each other since. Until a body turns up in a disused well on the Cardwell Ranch, and the new temporary marshall turns out to be none other than Hudson Savage.

The crime seems to be tied to every member of Dana’s family who, coincidentally, are urging Dana to sell the farm quickly.

The characters are flat and one-dimensional. They don’t live up to their descriptions at all. Dana is suppose to be tough-as-old-boots, but lets the plot and characters walk all over her. Hudson is supposed to hate his father, until suddenly, he doesn’t anymore.

The murder mystery aspect of the book is actually quite good, and certainly far better than I was expecting from a romance novel, though in the context of the overall plot, it seemed just an excuse to bring the two characters together. It was also quite easy to work out who the murderer was, so this subplot didn’t keep me interested.

The romance aspect was disappointing.Dana and Hudson’s romance is not intriguing in any way. It’s fairly obvious right from the beginning what’s going to happen, the storyline is very cliched.

Everything is very in-your-face and overt in this book, there’s no “show, don’t tell,” going on here.

Overall, pretty disappointing, but it was free, so I can’t complain.

This review is cross-posted on Amazon and GoodReads.

The plot was incredulous. Madison, a spoiled brat, travels to Italy for a year and falls in love with coffee. She then decides to get an MBA and open an espresso shop, but it doesn’t occur to her that she may need to learn how to make coffee.

Her brother returns from a tour in Iraq and at his homecoming party, she comes on to his best friend, Gabe, a police officer. She turns her down, unable to think past the fact that she is his best friend’s sister.

Then, thanks to the Espresso Bandit, a thief who is targetting espresso shops, Gabe has to step in to protect Madison.

Madison, is thoroughly unlikeable. Materialistic, shallow, attention-seeking, self-centred, spoiled and stupid (who sets up a coffee business without knowing how to make coffee?), she is exactly the kind of person most of us would actively avoid if we met her.

The love interest, Gabe, though as flat and one-dimensional as all the other characters in this book, is a genuinely nice person, and rather than rooting for his romance and with Madison, the reader roots for him to realise how much better he can do.

There are some attempts at making the sex kinky, but they’re so tame and poorly written, I barely noticed the characters were having sex.

I often contemplated giving up on this book entirely, but struggled through because I wanted to see if it got better. It didn’t.

Don’t waste your time.

Let’s see. Wicklow-Cyprus-back to Wicklow-Connemara-Corofin-DCU-Corofin-DCU-Cavan-DCU-Cavan and now finally, back to Galway again.

Himself lost his job yesterday. He finishes up next Friday and because the house we live in belongs to his boss, we’re moving house.

But it’s fine. We’re happy. I’m relatively indifferent, seeing as I’m out of work. He’s happy because we both miss Galway and had plans to move back anyway. Him losing his job has simply forced our hands, and made us take the leap we’ve been talking about for months.

I have big plans for this year, so stay tuned.

Also, I apologise for the lack of multimedia in my posts. I blogged in December about my laptop meeting an untimely end, so I’m using the WordPress app and frankly it’s too fiddly to post pictures and videos in.

Normal service will resume as soon as I repair the screen on my laptop. And god knows when that might be.

LKH replaces them with Edward (who Anita describes as … a hit man. He specialized in monsters. Vampires, shape-shifters, anything and everything. There were people like me who did it legal, but Edward didn’t sweat the legalities or, hell, the ethics. He was an equal opportunity killer. I may be one of the few friends that Edward has, but it’s like being friends with a tame leopard. It may curl on the foot of your bed and let you pet its head, but it can still eat your throat out…) and his merry band of assassins, who bring Anita to New Mexico to help solve some pretty grisly murders down there.

There are bodies turning up torn apart, and any survivors have been completely skinned but are somehow still alive. Anita owes Edward a favour from Blue Moon, and this is how he decides to call it in.

Edward’s merry band of assassins isn’t actually all that merry. Bernardo is fine and friendly and flirtatious and fun to look at, but Olaf is a different kettle of fish. Olaf is a woman-hating serial rapist, who majorly resents Anita being on the team. That can only end well, right?

LKH does a wonderful job of describing the new surroundings. I remember reading on her blog once that she often sits into the car and drives around until she finds a location for a body or a scene, and it really shows in this book.

Thankfully, the lack of Jean Claude and Richard meant this book wasn’t as obsessed with Anita’s sex life as the others, which is possibly the reason I loved it so much. Plus, she’s not the object of desire for absolutely every male she comes in contact with, which was a refreshing break.

The lack of sex returns LKH to her horror and sci-fi roots, the things that made us fall in love with her writing in the first few books. There are monsters and Aztec gods (seemingly, a hell of a lot of research went into this book), and attempted rape, and even child rape scenes (and she doesn’t gloss over that one, it’s all there, vividly detailed). This is very definitely not paranormal romance.

Edward was an absolute revelation in this book. I know some people felt he was very mundane in this book, and some of the air of mystery was removed, but I think the tiny amount of insight we get into his life and mind and heart actually increases the mystery around him. Besides, he’s one of my absolute favourite characters, I’ll love him no matter what.

As with all of the ABVH books, several plots are weaved together in this book, but they all come together perfectly at the end. A lot of commenters online have said they felt the book could have been more concise (it is the longest in the series so far) but to be honest, I enjoyed the characters and plots so much I didn’t notice the length at all.

It does take a little while to get to the action though, as quite a bit of the first half is taken up with backstory and Edward’s alter ego Ted. Once LKH does delve into the action though, it’s gripping and doesn’t let you go until after the very last page.

Although there’s none of the annoying sex (I never thought I would describe sex as annoying…) there are still some irritating aspects to Anita, chief among them her “I love you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you right between the eyes,” attitude to…oh, just about everything. I’m struggling to think of genuine conversations in the book, as opposed to confrontations.

Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is the book I reread the most, the one that I’ll always enjoy.

Quick question for those of you who have read it; Am I the only one who perversely loves Olaf? Something is wrong with me, I know, but I like him, despite the whole rapist thing.

Anita agrees to help, but all that quickly gets swept under the carpet when she discovers some anonymous man has put a hit out on her. Edward, everyone’s favourite psychopathic assassin, is back in this book, to help save Anita from the nasty hit men. And no, Edward hasn’t gone soft. He was offered the contract, but turned it down because he would get to kill more people protecting Anita than hunting her. What’s not to love about him? Of course, these are not the only plots in the book. This is Laurell K. Hamilton, after all, the master of delicately weaving intricate plots together.

While trying not to be killed by hit men, Anita is also trying to sort out her relationship with Richard, who proposed to her, but won’t marry her until she sees him change for the first time. As well as that, he’s facing a pretty big threat of his own within the pack. Marcus, the current leader, or Ulfric, is sadistic and cruel to his pack members. Richard want to out him, but the only way to do that is to fight to the death. Anita, of course, thinks it’s the right thing to do. Richard, of course, thinks he would lose too much of himself in killing Marcus. And so goes the argument.

The Killing Dance is an important book in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series because it introduces the first real elements of erotic fiction into Laurell K.Hamilton’s work. The book is a turning point in the series because it introduces a lot more erotic fiction. However, that comes at the cost of a lot of the detective fiction, the investigations and the crimes that made the first five books so compelling.

I don’t see why Laurell K. Hamilton couldn’t include both. After all, preternatural experts on retainer to the police are allowed have sex. Fans of the series seem massively divided on this point. Personally, I love sex. I just feel that sometimes, Laurell K. Hamilton lets it get in the way of a good plot and fabulous writing. However, in this book, the balance is just about perfect.  The plots weave together intricately, and are perfectly paced.

Laurell K. Hamilton never lets the reader get bored by dialogue or overwhelmed by action. There is definitely something for all paranormal fans in this book.