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Larapinta by Annie Seaton
Dead of Spring by Samantha Wilde
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Contemporary RomanceMystery/CrimeReviewsRomantic Suspense

Larapinta by Annie Seaton

written by Dísir
Larapinta by Annie SeatonLarapinta by Annie Seaton
Series: Porter Sisters #5
Published by Amazon Digital Services, Amazon Publishing on March 11th 2022
Pages: 278
Buy on Amazon
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three-stars

At a crossroads in her life, Sandra Porter knows she must find the courage to find her true self. She has lost her husband in tragic circumstances, and seen each of her adult children overcome adversity. Deciding it’s time to push her boundaries, she makes a booking to trek the Larapinta Walk across the centre of the remote Northern Territory.

World renowned nature photographer, Graysen Hughes has come to the outback seeking solace after the death of his wife. Always a loner, Graysen isn’t happy when the tour guide insists on the participants walking in pairs. At least Sandra Porter is quiet and keeps to herself.

After a suspicious accident and the sudden disappearance of their guide, the group struggles on, but then another accident occurs. It soon becomes obvious that someone doesn’t want them to complete the trek. Without any means to call for help, Graysen and Sandra flee into the bush in an attempt to stay safe.

Can they survive the wilderness in the heat and the rugged conditions, and can they both keep their hearts intact as they learn to rely on each other?

Annie Seaton’s landscapes of the Australian wilderness have been such a draw for me going into her books. Having her write about the Larapinta trail and all the otherworldliness it can offer to a city-dweller makes this part of the book an amazing read.

I’ve followed Seaton’s Porter sisters books on and off and Sandra’s story caps it all off, though I’ll admit that the sisters’ stories have long slipped my mind. ‘Larapinta’ is good on its own but there are a lot of catch-up chapters of what happened in previous books–more so if you’d like to catch up on Sandra’s large family and how they’ve gotten on after their own stories.

A large source of frustration here however, was the number of open-ended questions that I was left to wonder about after the book’s climax. So focused was the entire story on Sandra and Greyson’s feelings and experience with some deep third person POVs mainly confined to these two that the larger mystery isn’t exactly unravelled for the reader: what really happened to Andrew after the rescue? What exactly was the contract kill about and who were the pair responsible for sparking it all off?

We’re given speculative questions and answers but no clear resolutions, with Seaton choosing to put the spotlights on Sandra’s daughters (I did skip those chapters as they felt like a domestic distraction that I wasn’t too interested in pursuing) rather than drawing an overarching plot around the paid assassination and the collateral damage that followed during the hike itself.

The budding romance between an older couple also seemed to be just that: something shy that we witness over the course of a few days, heightened by the remoteness of the location and the sudden danger then falling flat when there is a sudden skip a few years into the future where Sandra and Greyson are suddenly settled into their HEA.

So this turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag in the end: engrossing because of the Larapinta trail and the suspense, but also disappointing because of the lack of development in that very area, yet with a definitive confirmation that romance isn’t just for the young.

three-stars
Larapinta by Annie Seaton was last modified: May 29th, 2022 by Dísir
20th June 2022 0 comment
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Dead of Spring by Samantha Wilde

written by Dísir
Dead of Spring by Samantha WildeDead of Spring by Samantha Wilde
Series: Whistlemore series #2
Published by Samantha Wilde on 7th June 2022
Pages: 121
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three-stars

When Quin Levington shows up at her door, Josie Ryan is fuming. It’s the one-year anniversary of Liam’s death: her boyfriend and Quin’s best friend. And it’s been eight months since Quin fell off the face of the earth—when she needed him most.

Despite the anger simmering inside her, part of her is relieved to see his warm hazel eyes. But he comes bearing news. Quin believes Liam’s death wasn’t an accident, and when Josie is attacked, it becomes shockingly clear that a killer is among them.

Quin has always been in love with Josie, but he’d never cross the line with his best friend’s girl. He knows someone tampered with the harness that should have prevented his friend’s fall, and since Liam’s death someone has been trying to chase him away. After being framed for starting a bar fire, Quin was forced into hiding—and away from Josie.

He and Josie quickly realize that the killer won’t let up until Josie is dead. Quin will do everything in his power to protect her. He owes it to his friend . . . and himself. But the closer he gets to Josie, the harder it is to keep his hands off her. Her haunting eyes are full of anguish and grief, but when her lips touch his, he knows he can never let her go. Not again. Together, they must bring the killer to justice and avenge Liam’s death, once and for all.

Samantha Wilde is a new-to-me-author and ‘Dead of Spring’ is a short and sharp distraction of a novella that helps you wind your way off the beaten-track of life for a few hours before leading you back to it. I picked this up because the blurb was my kind of thing with that hint of the forbidden, with some suspense thrown into it.

And generally, it was an average read all around; Quin/Josie did seem a convincing pair though it felt like an instant-lust/love type given the length of the novella, though that didn’t come without the prerequisite troubles in their way. In the end, I’d could accept their HEA, but wondered at the strength of their connection past the dramatic climax.

There were some odd elements (certain pieces of dialogue, phrasing, contextual clues, even the characters’ way of thinking and expressions) which I couldn’t exactly reconcile with the entirety of the story as it did feel as though I was plopped straight in the centre of an ongoing drama and had only a small glimpse of a romance section within. That did contribute somewhat to the implausibility of the plot and some things didn’t add up exactly with the picture I’d built up by the time I’d finished the book, or maybe there were just some questions I had left that just weren’t adequately addressed at all.

Still, a fast read if you want a quickie of sorts, more so if you’re able to keep that suspension of disbelief throughout.

three-stars
Dead of Spring by Samantha Wilde was last modified: May 28th, 2022 by Dísir
13th June 2022 0 comment
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Cold Silence by Toni Anderson

written by Dísir
Cold Silence by Toni AndersonCold Silence by Toni Anderson
Series: Cold Justice: Most Wanted #1
Published by Toni Anderson, Toni Anderson Inc. on 14th June 2022
Pages: 304
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four-stars

FBI Hostage Rescue Team member Shane Livingstone is frustrated when an injury sidelines him during an operation to catch a sadistic killer. A killer who auctions off vicious ways to torture his victims and screens the events for money on the dark web. When a teammate dies during the op, a devastated Shane vows to track down the monster responsible—but to do so he’ll need access to specialized skills he doesn’t possess.

A bloody game of cat and mouse…

As a white-hat hacker at Alex Parker’s security firm, Yael Brooks knows how to track predators through the darkest recesses of cyberspace. She can’t say no to Shane’s request…even though she fears her own secrets may put her at risk.
With a serial killer who makes it personal…

Shane and Yael must work together as a team if they hope to stop this psychopath. As they begin to grow closer, Shane demands Yael’s complete trust, but trust is the one thing Yael is reluctant to give. As the chase intensifies and more people die, it becomes obvious that the killer knows exactly who Yael is and plans to make both her and Shane pay the ultimate price for getting in his way.

What I’ve always liked about Toni Anderson’s writing is that her suspense plots are always so excellently thought-out, so exquisitely crafted and written (and well-researched in a way that I’m sucked in hook, line and sinker) and so cranked out to the last minute when you think it can’t get any worse until something finally gives.

‘Cold Silence’ continues the whole larger FBI series in a similar vein, with Shane Livingstone and Yael Brooks reluctantly pairing up to nab a heinous and diabolical serial killer, who seems slippery enough to stay a few steps ahead each time they think they’ve tracked his digital footprints. There are a few tantalising morsels that Anderson drops about potential future plot-lines and pairings and as much I’d hope to see these getting developed, there was already so much in ‘Cold Silence’ to absorb and enjoy.

The only relationship I wasn’t too convinced about was Shane/Yael, even though I loved the awkward setup that Anderson had done for the both of them as well as the emotional aspect of Shane’s loss that’d led to some deception in their interactions. As competent as I thought they were individually as protagonists, I was less invested in them as a couple as there didn’t seem to be enough to tie them together–too much distrust and non-commitment as is the rote problem with operator-types perhaps?–apart from the common goal of catching the bad guy during a short but intense and trying period. And as much as that did kind of forge a connection of sorts, their weaker, HFN ending left me wondering if there was really enough there for them to build on past the climax of the book.

That said, the entire ‘Cold Justice’ series is something I’ve followed from the start and the gripes I’ve always had about the romance aside, I’ve always found Anderson’s storytelling too compelling and too engrossing to stay away from anything she writes.

four-stars
Cold Silence by Toni Anderson was last modified: May 28th, 2022 by Dísir
6th June 2022 0 comment
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For You & No One Else by Roni Loren

written by Dísir
For You & No One Else by Roni LorenFor You No One Else by Roni Loren
Series: Say Everything #3
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on 5th July 2022
Pages: 336
Buy on Amazon
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three-stars

Eliza Catalano has the perfect life. So what if it actually looks nothing like the story she tells online? As a therapist, it's part of her job to look like she has all the answers, right? But when Eliza ends up as a viral "Worst Date Ever" meme, everything in her Instagram-filtered world begins to crumble.

Enter the most obnoxiously attractive man she's ever met, and a bet she can't resist: if she swears off social media for six months, Beck Carter'll teach her the wonders of surviving the "real world." No technology, no dating apps, no pretty filters, no BS.

It seems like the perfect deal-she can lay low until her sudden infamy passes, meet some interesting new people, and maybe even curate this experience into a how I quit the online dating racket book along the way.

But something about Beck's raw honesty speaks to Eliza in ways she never expected. She knows he's supposed to be completely hands-off...but as complex feelings grow and walls come tumbling down, rough-around-the-edges Beck may be exactly what Eliza needs to finally, truly face herself-and decide who she really wants to be.

If there’s one thing that really jumped out at me, it’s how ‘For You & No One Else’ is so reflective of our contemporary, first-world issues, particularly in the realm of social media: the kind of swaggering front we put up for it as a means to shape some kind of narrative for the public to lap up versus the hidden traumas and privacy that we really all need but don’t appreciate enough.

Long story short, Roni Loren places Eliza and Beckham within this very intersection as protagonists who are accidentally drawn into each other’s circles, then find themselves as ideological opposites. Their personal histories put them at odds, even though the pull of attraction leads Eliza down an alley of digital withdrawal, which then leads to some not-so-surprising revelations…and frankly, an ick-moment (with shades of two-timing where both characters nevertheless insist that it’s just a way of slipping between boundaries because they’re not defined in the first place) that I wished I’d never read about.

As a result, I’ve been sitting alternating between feeling good and cringey about the book, which is probably typical of Loren’s writing for me of late. Loren’s way with words can slice emotions open from a heart of steel which do make her HEA endings quite satisfying, though I had some alarm bells ringing through my head because there’s just so much fuss about coming to some hard conclusions via self-actualisation–in this case, going off grid–, defining boundaries and unravelling things beneath the performative self that it became a bit of a merry-go-round in the end.

It’s inevitable I suppose, that there would be an element of deception there on several counts given the number of rules the characters try to work with, but that was the bit that just didn’t go down well with me by the time I’d gone through half the book. In short, I’m very undecided about ‘For You & No One Else’–there were times when I absolutely loved the incisive look at human nature and other times that I particularly hated how both Beck/Eliza behaved in a manner that dampened my enjoyment of the story.

three-stars
For You & No One Else by Roni Loren was last modified: May 9th, 2022 by Dísir
30th May 2022 0 comment
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The Rogue by Kimberly Kincaid

written by Dísir
The Rogue by Kimberly KincaidThe Rogue by Kimberly Kincaid
Series: The Intelligence Unit, #4, #4
Published by Kimberly Kincaid Romance on 10th May 2022
Pages: 262
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three-stars

The scars that cut deepest are the ones beneath the surface…

Detective Addison Hale is a survivor. The armor she uses to hide her scars keeps her safe on the job, and holding people at arm’s length is a small price to pay when there’s a stalker on the loose.Especially since he’s after the sister of impulsive firefighter Ryan Dempsey, who she had a scorching-hot fling with two months ago.

The fling she can’t forget, even though she knows how dangerous it is to get close.

To feel.

Ryan will do anything to keep his sister safe, even if it means he has to play by Addison’s rules. But when the stalker sets his sights on the smart, sexy detective, Ryan finds he’ll do anything for her, including risk his life to fight at her side.
But this enemy is as cunning as he is deadly and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Addison and Ryan must outrun the shadows and outwit a killer.

No matter the cost.

‘The Rogue’ is actually a follow up to a very brief stint that tells of the one-nighter both Addison Hale and Ryan Dempsey had a few months ago, until she ghosted him the morning after–where their second-chance sort of comes after a Ryan’s sister encounters a psychotic and very, very dangerous stalker.

The case itself is a simple but slippery one: the perp in question is slick and sly, knows the right words to say and how to shield his identity, throw the whole case of characters for a loop as they try to build a case against him. Proximity to the case and each other means that Ryan/Addison can once again get close…and see where this might lead them the second time around.

I liked Ryan and Addison as individual characters and even thought they were capable and pretty well-rounded as protagonists. Kimberly Kincaid definitely threw some role reversal into the mix here with the opposites-attracting kind of vibe: Ryan being the impulsive, emotive one, while Addison was the commitment-phobe who needed to learn to let people who cared past those walls of hers.

Yet as a pairing, I struggled to see the chemistry together or gotten the sense that they needed each other past this case, even if their relationship was certainly written as distant-friends first, then a sudden lust that turned to love which I had a little harder bit of a time believing perhaps. In fact, I kept on reading because of the suspense–while not trying to be weird about it–but the case took my interest first, followed by a relationship that I thought was lukewarm at best. It’s not in any way a slight to Kincaid’s writing clearly, but just wasn’t feeling too much for this particular pairing.

three-stars
The Rogue by Kimberly Kincaid was last modified: May 5th, 2022 by Dísir
23rd May 2022 0 comment
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Action/AdventureAdvanced Reader CopyFantasyMagic/ParanormalNetgalleyReviewsSpeculative Fiction

A Curse of Queens by Amanda Bouchet

written by Dísir
A Curse of Queens by Amanda BouchetA Curse of Queens by Amanda Bouchet
Series: Kingmaker Chronicles #4
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on 4th October 2022
Pages: 496
Buy on Amazon
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five-stars

The queen has been cursed, and no one knows who’s behind the plot to threaten the realm’s fragile peace. Desperate to help, Jocasta hatches a plan to find Circe’s Garden, a fabled island where she hopes to discover an antidote.

But she can’t do it alone. She needs the strong arm and unflinching bravery of the warrior she’s loved since childhood—her brother’s right-hand-man and captain of the guard, Flynn of Sinta.

Together they can do the impossible. Yet with treachery brewing on Mount Olympus, one thing is clear: Thalyria and its new royals are still pawns in an epic game of power—one that might end in a War of Gods.

A happily-ever-after isn’t guaranteed for Cat/Griffin, which is how ‘A Curse of Queens’ begins–even if you do know it’s just temporary. But take a few steps in and you’ll enter into Amanda Bouchet’s world: one that’s a very, very slanted reframing and recollection of Greek mythology–purists, look away right now–cut and pasted piecemeal into a fraught land that is of her own imagination, where the pantheon of gods still behave as badly as the humans who populate the lands they apparently created.

But as much the last few books didn’t exactly sit too well with me, ‘A Curse of Queens’ is a relatively self-contained story within the larger universe built of the series: a new couple who should have been together from the start but weren’t, a quest archetype to save a newly-remade land, and a hastily-assembled team of varying gifts taking on insurmountable odds in order to save their queen.

Jocasta’s and Flynn’s relationship, written with so much heart, longing and angst (and short-lived unrequited feelings of a brother’s-best-friend kind of trope) helped anchor these elements and the result is a potent mix of high fantasy, adventure, unexpected humour and a portal into an alternate universe that sucks you right in. That both Jo/Flynn were neither magical nor immensely gifted by the gods, relying on their human strength, wits and cunning to get through the obstacles set before them, made them even memorable.

‘A Curse of Queens’ can be a standalone; Bouchet’s map of her world and a very, very generic idea of Greek mythology will get you through it, though not without much difficulty in following the story from where the last book left off. The story grew on me as I went on and to immediately want more after the somewhat rushed conclusion probably meant that this has to rank as one of my unexpected finds of the year.

five-stars
A Curse of Queens by Amanda Bouchet was last modified: May 2nd, 2022 by Dísir
16th May 2022 0 comment
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Chick LitContemporary RomanceNew AdultReviews

Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez

written by Dísir
Part of Your World by Abby JimenezPart of Your World by Abby Jimenez
Published by Forever on 19th April 2022
Pages: 400
Buy on Amazon
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four-stars

After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come—the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.

While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important.

Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

My first Abby Jimenez book and it was a solid, solid offering (oh, thank god) that dragged me in from the afternoon and way past my bedtime.

More than an age-gap romance, ‘Part of Your World’ is exactly what the title says it is and also much more than an older woman who accidentally breezes into a town that’s in the middle of nowhere and gets caught up with a much younger man who wears multiple hats in that place–and is refreshingly unashamed of who he is and his own lot in life.

What I love however, is how Jimenez writes of parallels and “mirrorings” that tie the whole cast of characters together. The number 125 takes on certain significance for Alexis and Daniel just as the cycle of abuse gets perpetrated on several levels and ways and the brokenness that results from it that can’t easily be waved away by weeks spent in therapy. The age-gap isn’t made too much a big deal of, but rather, it’s the mile-long gap between their social status and social circles from which Jimenez draws the friction.

What stuck however, by the end of it all, was that I simply liked how easy Alexis and Daniel are together–without too many angsty, wishy-washy shenanigans and how they always manage to laugh, learn with and support each other.

I’d wished of course, that Alexis has a little more courage to overturn that ordered life earlier, but also constantly marvelled constantly at Daniel’s steadfastness in his pursuit of the relationship. Grounded way beyond his years while retaining a little bit of that youthful sense of idealism, I felt so sorry for him that he got the short end of the stick quite a fair bit up until the point where Alexis finally, finally stood on her own two feet and went for the life she really wanted.

In short, there’s a little bit of everything I do like in a rom-com, from the smattering of humour to some bit of angst, even if the identity struggles so feel a little too youngish at this stage in life for Alexis with some bitchy-shallow-girlfriend-clichés too overly done. Still, ‘Part of Your World’ has that feel-good sensation after I’d finished the book al bleary-eyed and unable to sleep, so maybe there was still that bit of Wakan-fairy-dust left sprinkled in its pages.

four-stars
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez was last modified: April 23rd, 2022 by Dísir
9th May 2022 0 comment
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