Ugh. I'm going to give this series one more book but I think I'm about to be over it. I rounded up from 2 and a half stars but it has two of the tropes that I dislike most in books - a love triangle and a clueless amateur detective. I don't mind an amateur that knows that they're not an expert but Charli not only runs head first into danger, she likes to lecture the sheriff on how to do his job. Really? REALLY?
In the first book of this series, Rowan McAuliffe was forced to do some pretty horrible things for a werewolf including trying to kill the main characters of that book and the second. So the Mage High Council has sent a Witch Hunter after her. The mysterious Delilah sends Rowan to the witch hunter's house so that she can hide right under his nose while she plays nanny to his magical triplets.
Known as the Royal Hottie, Phillip Roarke is the second oldest in the royal family of Villeroy, an island kingdom off the coast of France. He is not at all amused to be conscripted into a mad scheme of his new sister-in-law to help bring commerce to their island. She wants to open up a high-end spa and to get the word out as well as raise some money, she has put together a bachelor auction made up of Phillip and his other unmarried brothers and puts the word out to some of her wealthy former hair clients.
I'm going to start this review with saying that Hutchison is a very good writer in terms of putting together sentences and creating a good flow. But this book was not what the blurb made it out to be. It is a "memoir" in the sense that the author talks about her life and going through some hard times. It is not a memoir in the sense that we never get to see anything more than what the author actually did. Yes, she went through 37 therapies but we don't get any sense of why those therapies were picked or what she learned from any of them. And without that connection, this is an okay book but mostly feels self-indulgent and definitely nothing that makes me want to pick up anything else by the author. What could have made this book better? Mix the Glossary in with the actual therapies. Get more into the history. Tell us more about which therapies actually worked and why it worked for her.
I have enjoyed other books by Ms. Holiday but this one just didn't resonate as well. I think part of the problem was that this took place over a year which should have been great for the relationship development but, instead, we just dipped in and out of different days making it feel a little bit more shallow. And I wish Eve hadn't let Sawyer off so easy for making life decisions for her even if it was "better in the end." That's a BS reason to make decisions for somebody else and that seems to be a theme in romance novels I'm reading lately, men making sweeping life decisions for women because they "know" best. In at least one other book the guy figured out his mistake and I guess Sawyer sort of did but I wish we had seen more.
Brooke's life isn't going great. Rather than being out in the field, shooting the travel documentaries that she loved, she's behind the scenes as a producer. Her OCD is barely contained and one of the guys she's working with is also someone she's sleeps with occasionally which is usually okay but can also cause some tensions. Next to her perfect sister, she feels like she's a mess.
Near Sarah Booth Delaney's home, they've started an archaeological dig on a burial mound but something has gone wrong. One of the main archaeologists has been murdered in a very brutal fashion. The other archaeologist, Frank Hafner, hires Sarah Booth and Tinkie to clear his name. There are a lot of suspects since the murdered woman was a maneater and endeared herself to no one. Peter Deerstalker, the member of a local tribe is also hellbent on making sure that the dig stops so that his ancestors can rest in peace. And there was something odd about the family who most recently owned the property. Could they be coming back to cause trouble?
Wow. When I requested this book from NetGalley, I thought it was from one of Adams' other series. So when the book opened in the middle of a car chase with characters I didn't remember, I was lost. Even when I finally figured out what was going on, I was still sort of lost.
Jill Gardner's small touristy town is holding a St. Patrick's Day festival. She is overwhelmed and not really loving the number of people who are walking around drunk in the middle of the day. But she is charmed by one young woman. Too bad the young lady later ends up dead and Jill wants to know why.
Gabe and Addison have been conducting a series of one-and two-night stands. She's in New York and he's in New Orleans, there's never going to be a real relationship. Until Gabe finds out that Addison is now living in New Orleans. And when he finds out that she's a single-mom, his single-dad heart just falls a little deeper. The story follows their relationship as it progresses into being an Actual Relationship.
Do you wish that you were living a better life? Doing good not only for yourself but for your nation and the entire planet? Ashlee Piper is here to tell you how to do it all in a series of essays and bulleted lists. Is any of it particularly new or astonishing? No. Is it filled with popular vernacular that would make it more suited to a popular blog than a book that is trying to make a difference in the world? "Yas." It may not bother some readers but it began to be tedious as the book went on.
I liked the world building in this book though there was a somewhat forced effort to cross paths with Connolly's other series. The ending though was... less than satisfying. I mean, the reason for the murder, really? We haven't seen this is in SO MANY books in the past. It's a sad, overworn stereotype. It dropped the book a full star for me.
I chose this book because I thought it would be about the work that a cleaner does. This book is more the portrait of one particular cleaner. That threw me off as did the fact that the "Present Day" chapters of this book is told in the present tense. For some reason, that just grates on me as a reader. Another thing that grates, the author is clearly a good friend/in deep awe of her subject and that ruins her objectivity. While I agree that Sandra Pankhurst is a pretty amazing woman, this book shows only a shining light on Sandra. I like to see a little more grit, more of the dark side of a biography's main topic. And we know for sure that Sandra herself is an unreliable narrator, so how much can we trust the historical chapters interspersed with the present day?
The book opens in the 1400s during a battle with Vlad Dracul. We find out that his twin half-brothers have some book with magic powers and he sends them away during the battle that takes his live in order to save the book.