I joined in on the “A Different Time” book tour for the Write Reads blogging group! This book has a beautiful cover and I was drawn to it right away. I am a huge fan of double exposures.
Synopsis: Keith Nolan falls in love with a remarkable young woman from the past, talking to him on a home video she recorded in 1989. To keep their conversation going, he must find more of her tapes—while forces work against them both, and time is running out.
You buy this book on Amazon and find more info about this book on Goodreads!
Author Bio
Beginning as a sketch comedy writer for American television, Michael K. Hill progressed to become an internationally published writer of fiction and non-fiction. His short story anthology, Anansi and Beyond, published in 2017, and his debut novel, A Different Time, is available now. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, kids, and 7 rescued animals.
Another book crushed during the NEWTS! I know that it is now September but I am just getting around to writing the reviews for the NEWTS books now because I was so busy trying to read them all before August was over. This one was called Last Call At The Nightshade Loungeby Paul Krueger.
Synopsis: College grad Bailey Chen has a few demons: no job, no parental support, and a rocky relationship with Zane, the only friend who’s around when she moves back home. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his cadre of monster-fighting bartenders, her demons get a lot more literal. Like, soul-sucking hell-beast literal. Soon, it’s up to Bailey and the ragtag band of magical mixologists to take on whatever—or whoever—is behind the mysterious rash of gruesome deaths in Chicago, and complete the lost recipes of an ancient tome of cocktail lore.
This book was so good! When I heard about it through a booktuber named “Drums Of Autumn”, I knew I needed to have it. The concept of mixing drinks that enable the person to have superpowers alone is fascinating and I was instantly intrigued.
And then I start reading and find out that it is a diverse book with a mixed-race main character named Bailey and I love it even more. It is really enriching to see more diverse sets of characters in strong leading roles. There is also a Canadian character that I absolutely loved because they didn’t exactly show a stereotypical Canadian person with the “Sorry’s” and the “I love maple syrup” but gave them a multilayered personality that was just a joy to experience.
The book would end some chapters with drink recipes explaining what powers this drink gave you and the magical history behind how it was discovered among the bartenders and mixers. They had drawings of the drinks in an old victorian sketching style.
I normally don’t gravitate towards a book with historical elements (not a fan of historical fiction) but I would love to learn all about the mixing lore and the discovery of magical drinks.
There is a lot of action, some romance and a take on superpowers that I have never experienced before. It was very easy to get through and I found myself having a hard time putting this book down! I would recommend this book to anyone that wants a fun urban fantasy book that is very well-paced and honestly should be a series….hint hint….Paul, make another book like this!
Disclaimer: I was given this book as a gift and I read it because I wanted to. I was in no way compensated to give it an honest review.
It is finally September and I completed my NEWTS TBR but until I make that video, here is my September TBR where I talk about the books I will be reading this month and announce my giveaway winner!
Welcome to theblog tour for a truly unique, true crime type thriller, written memoir style called, Why She Lied by Julie Coons. Please read on for an excerpt and a chance to win a copy of the book!
*Warning: This book has many extreme triggers including but not limited to, sexual assault, child abuse, violence, and various types of trauma.
Why She Lied
Publication Date: March 3rd, 2019
Genre: True Crime/ Memoir
Will she have to lose her child to save her child?
The day she tells her boyfriend she’s pregnant, is the same day he tells her he’s been accused of molestation. His trial is set to begin the following day.
She needs answers…
To get them, she tricks her boyfriend into signing a release form, giving her full access to all of his legal documents. She uncovers the truth, he’s guilty.
To save her unborn child from this monster, she gets an abortion.
FIVE YEARS LATER and still rebuilding her life, Julie finds out her ex-boyfriend has just become the most wanted man in America, involved in human trafficking. When detectives ask for her help locating him, she gets drawn into a baffling mystery. What began as a seemingly simple search soon turns into a much darker reality.
Someone from her past is watching…
Bit by bit, the tapestry of her own secret childhood begins to unravel. What she learns about her past will haunt her forever: family isn’t always what it seems.
Can she help bring this predator to justice, or will she die trying?
I wanted to throw up. It was so disturbing to hear her talk about a grown man trying to have sexual relations with a child. I expressed my deepest condolences to her.
Then she asked me the million-dollar question: “Are you still with James?”
“No way, of course not, but I have a problem. I found out the day before he told me about his court date that I was pregnant with his child.”
I could actually hear her gasp on the other end of the phone.
Without taking another breath she said, “You have to get rid of that baby.”
JULIE COONS lives in a small town in Oregon. THIS DOES NOT LEAVE THIS HOUSE was her debut memoir. Amy’s bookshelf reviews awarded it the #1 position for top 10 books of 2018. Her second book WHY SHE LIED is based on a true story. Her books are written to lead a movement toward positive change. She tells the stories of her life with honesty and strength.
It is finally September and I completed my NEWTS TBR but until I make that video, here is my September TBR where I talk about the books I will be reading this month and announce my giveaway winner!
I am kicking the NEWTS in the ass! I recently finished this book for my “outstanding” for Defense Against the Dark Arts prompt. This one was called The Savages by Matt Whyman.
Synopsis: They’d love to have you for dinner . . .
Sasha Savage is in love with Jack – a handsome, charming … vegetarian. Which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that Sasha’s family are very much ‘carnivorous’. Behind the family facade, all is not as it seems. Sasha’s father rules his clan with an iron fist and her mother’s culinary skills are getting more adventurous by the day. When a too-curious private detective starts to dig for truths, the tight-knit family starts to unravel – as does their sinister taste in human beings . . .
So this book hooked me from the subtitle “They’d love to have you for dinner…”! I saw this in the bookstore and immediately put it in my cart. It was also on sale so that helped make my decision for me.
I read this as a prompt for the magical readathon since it was to read a book by an English author and I am glad I picked up this book. It was such a cool premise with a family of “meat” eaters, one of the children wanting to try being vegetarian and how the family reacts to this.
I found the characters were all well developed. I especially liked Ivan (the middle child) because he was a mischievous prankster with just the right amount of sinister.
The way that the family’s heritage was explained and the reasoning behind why they are the way that they are was really fun to discover. I would say that this is definitely a young adult book as I believe it may be a little too much for younger readers in some of the scenes.
Overall, it was a pretty good book that had a lot of underlying humor and punny wit.
Our external reviewer Sara took another swing at a new book. She has been busy with her crafts over at Adorkable Little Creatures (her latest inspiration comes from Black Panther) but she still managed to find some time to read. This one had been on our TBR pile for a while. It is called After The World by Maire Brophy. Check out her review below!
Synopsis:After the war is lost, all that remains is to survive. And when you know what you’ve done, you can’t hope for anything more.
Bereft in a hostile world, an orc general struggles to come to terms with his role in the destruction of his people. Running and hiding from the humans and elves that hunt him down, he searches for other orc survivors.
When two human wizards finally pin him down in an abandoned orcish mountain fortress, he must use his wits and cunning to prevail, redeeming himself and the magic of his people.
After the World by Maire Brophy is a unique and fun light fantasy novel. Told from the point of view of our narrator, an orc, we learn about how his world has ended, and his struggle to find new meaning in a world that he helped destroy.
This novel was written in such a way that you felt as if the narrator truly was an orc, without it being an over-the-top alien feeling. He definitely seems humanoid, with some fun little quirks because of being an orc. I enjoyed the balance between these two styles.
I also enjoyed not being able to predict where the book was going. There are no cliches here, which is so hard to find, especially in a novel that reads on the line between adult and young adult content. The development of both the plot and the character is really well done and feels very natural. I enjoyed staying up too late to read this!
I can’t think of anything that I wished for more from this book. It was a fun read, and different than you’d expect. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone with any fantasy interest looking for something unique.
Who doesn’t love a good Boogeyman story? Well, I have a creepy little novella to share that will make you want to check your closet before bed!
Read on for more details about Reaper by Jonathan Pongratz, and a chance to win a signed copy of your own!
Reaper: A Horror Novella
Publication Date: April 19th, 2019
Genre: YA Horror/ Novella
THE BOOGEYMAN IS REAL
Gregory and his little sister Imogen love spending Halloween with their parents. But this year is different. If he proves he can take care of Imogen all by himself, he’ll finally have the allowance he’s dreamed of.
That was before the basement door opened on its own. Before the strange door appeared in the basement and Imogen was taken from him by the monster.
Now everyone in town is blaming him for her disappearance, but no one is listening to his story. Where did the door come from? What was that creature? And most of all, can he find his sister before it’s too late, or will he bury his memories of her along with his parents?
Call me a scaredy cat all you want, but there was always something about the basement that I didn’t like. It always made me feel like I was being watched, like there was some
thing in the shadows just waiting for me to make a wrong move. Even now, the frigid air crept over me, creating more goosebumps on my arms and legs. I quickened my strides up the stairs, Imogen dragging behind.
We were halfway up the stairs when the knocks stopped. For a moment, I stopped my climb. The house was eerily quiet, and for reasons I can’t explain I felt a sudden urge to hurry back upstairs. I charged forward, trying to pull Immy along with me, but she resisted.
“Too fast!” she whined.
“If you hurry, we can play dress up sooner, now come on!” I yanked on Immy’s arm, practically lifting her into the air. Seven steps. Just seven more steps and we could look back on this night and laugh it off. Seven, six, five. Almost there.
I was just three steps away from the door when I leaped for the landing. I’ll never forget that jump. Time seemed to stand still, as if those cold icy fingers in the air had somehow found a way to slow time down. I remember that I had a smile on my face, a smile that disappeared when the door slammed shut in my face.
Jonathan Pongratz is a writer and author of captivating horror, urban fantasy, and paranormal stories. When he’s not writing, he’s busy being a bookworm, video game junkie, and karaoke vocalist. A former resident of Dallas, he currently resides in Kansas City with his halloween cat Ajax. By day he works magic in finance, by night he creates dark and mesmerizing worlds.
Rapid Fire Book Tag you say? I tried to answer these questions on the fly! Thanks to Dominic from Reading Fandom for tagging me to do this.
Also for all you fantasy lovers out there, my friend Moud Adel (author of the War Remnants which I reviewed in July) has created this new game called Majority Rules where you get to decide what happens in his fantasy story. You will read the story and then vote in a poll for what you want the next scene to be. YOU take control and YOU make the decisions. Every Thursday, there will be new scene options so it is a continuous game! Check it out by clicking on the image below!
It’s the summer of 2012 and Elizabeth Megalos is a disillusioned art-school grad getting by as a bank teller in St. Louis. One evening, she’s attacked by a possessed coworker and saved by a mysterious, wise-cracking sorcerer named Eddy. He drags Elizabeth and Hugh—a skeptical scholar of the occult—to Europe, where he introduces them to his three magical celebrity friends. Once there, Eddy explains the group’s mission: preventing a Demiurge—a creature out of Gnostic Christian mythology—from fulfilling the visions of doom in the Book of Revelation. The Demiurge has been drawing power from the misguided beliefs in the Mayan apocalypse and is set to start the destruction on Dec. 21st, 2012. Through ritual magic and a series of psychedelic experiences, the group learns that Elizabeth is the key to taking down the Demiurge, though she can’t imagine how she will be the one to stop Armageddon.
“OK. Seriously. Please. Tell me exactly who you are, what you’re doing, how you made my phone fly into your hand, and why the fuck my co-worker just assaulted me,” said Elizabeth, the last of her patience dwindling.
“You can call me Eddy,” he said. “The milk is for the protection spirit I called to keep us safe for now. As for your coworker… well, she’s possessed by a qlippoth, which is pretty much a vampiric assemblage of cravings, guilt, self-loathing, and a whole other mess of nasty emotional energies. Most are made when the sad and pathetic losers of the world jerk off to some of the sickest porn the bowels of the Internet can shit out. Obviously, there’s a fair number of these icky beasties around. This particular one’s been coalescing around your back alley. Probably feeding off of your used tampons or something. They like those. Used condoms and jerk-off rags too. Genital fluids are like bonbons for these things. And sometimes they’re able to possess people with very little emotional control and/or intelligence during certain astronomical phases. My guess is your coworker wasn’t exactly a shining example of emotional stability. As for the phone: involving the cops would just complicate things, so I used a little arcane prestidigitation to take it from you for the moment.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Elizabeth.
“OK, we need to skip past the whole ‘Spirits? Magic? Are you crazy?’ shit because we’ve got a hungry, demon-possessed hippie trying to break in and drink our nether juices, and I for one don’t want that chick anywhere near my junk.”
Austin Case received a Master’s Degree from the University of Amsterdam in Western Esotericism and Mysticism. His academic knowledge of the occult and other peripheral phenomena has given him a unique take on fantasy and speculative fiction.
I took some time to myself and enjoyed a graphic novel in all the hustle and bustle of readathons because I felt like I deserved a little break. This one was called Xmen: Necrosha and it is made by Marvel and a bunch of their artists.
Synopsis: The Necrosha event hits X-Men: Legacy! Selene’s master plan is clicking into place, but she got something she didn’t plan for when destiny was brought back to life. a major X-villain snuck back into the world of the living along with destiny, and now a who’s who of X-Men are being sent to Muir Island to deal with their resurrected foe. Join Nightcrawler, Colossus, Psylocke, Rogue and the X-Men’s newest member – the master of magnetism, Magneto – as they dive into Necrosha.
This was a quick and fun read for me. I picked it up on sale at a comic book shop and decided to read it one day on a whim. It was nice to get back into the world of X-men and to see some of the newer mutants that I was not aware of up until this point. The X-men team is ever-changing in leadership and this keeps it interesting. I like that some of the mutants powers continue to evolve and that the storylines for X-men and always so fun and intense!
Overall, I would suggest this graphic novel if you want to pick something up and jump right into the story without much buildup to the main event because this one starts you off right at the main event.
Disclaimer: I bought this book with my own money and read it because I wanted to.
August has arrived and with it the Magical Readathon!! It is time to take my N.E.W.T.S! Watch this video to see which books I will be reading for my exams!
Welcome back bookworms! July has been quite the reading month and this was the 5th book I had finished which is pretty good for me. This one was called The Grey Sisters by Jo Treggiari. Jo was kind enough to send me physical copies of both of her books because I read her first book called Blood Will Out, loved it, and have been a huge supporter of her since. So now I am starting a Jo Treggiari section on my bookshelf 🙂 which means that you better write more books Jo!
Book Synopsis: D and Spider have always been close friends, and they are further united in their shared heartbreak: they both lost siblings in a horrific plane crash two years earlier. A chance sighting of a beloved cuddly toy in a photograph of the only survivor spurs D to finally seek closure. She and Spider and their friend, Min, set off on a road trip to the mountainside site of that terrible crash.
Ariel has lived on the mountain all her life. She and her extended family are looked down upon by neighboring townsfolk and she has learned to live by her wits, trusting few people outside of her isolated, survivalist community. A terrifying attack sends her down the mountain for help; on her way, she comes upon the three girls — a chance encounter that will have far-reaching consequences for them all.
Jo’s books always start out with such gripping chapters and this one did not disappoint! The book starts immediately in an intense scene and the sense of urgency pulls you right in.
She is very good at telling a story from multiple perspectives. Her first book was like this too, bouncing back and forth between two perspectives and this one continued with that feeling but it was bumped up to about 4 or 5 different perspectives and the way that they all tied together was magnificently told.
The book had the perfect amount of “creepy” factor for me. I love books that can make me feel like I am being watched or that there is a hidden figure in the room. It adds so much suspense to the book and just gets me in that creeped out mood that I get when watching a well put together scary/thriller movie. This book was a success on this front. Some of the situations that the characters were put in would make me feel really scared and I absolutely loved that the book could make me feel these things.
There are definitely some twists and turns that you won’t be expecting. I sort of figured it out when I was about halfway through but that is because I have a feel for Jo’s writing style now and I look for certain cues. But that is all a part of the fun for me. If I can figure out a story before it is revealed then I feel like a badass.
This book is a great read for someone that wants a YA fiction with a little bit of thriller in it. And if you get the chance to check out her other book, Blood Will Out, then I strongly suggest it because you will be thinking about it well after you have finished.
I just wanted to take today to thank you for everything that you do for the blogging community. If any of you don’t know Dave, he runs The Write Reads blog and blogging group. He has put together some of the biggest blog tours and he is a huge supporter of his fellow bloggers. Every day, he shares a blog post and review from 2 bloggers and then everyone in the group will retweet them.
These posts have seen significant traffic when it was my turn to be the post of the day and I am so grateful for being a part of this group. It wouldn’t be possible if Dave hadn’t come up with the idea to utilize a large group of bloggers to share each other’s posts so thank you, Dave, for being the amazing person that you are! You put in so much work every day to make sure that we all get the recognition we deserve and now it is your turn!
He is also so welcoming. I remember just starting to blog and not knowing how to get any traction or where to share my posts and then enter Dave. He helped me when I was just starting out on my journey to becoming a Worpdress Master (lol jk, I don’t think I will ever get to that level).
Just reach out to this guy on Twitter and he will be more than happy to add you to his large list of bloggers he works with every day. He is one of the most supportive people I know and we are all happy to know he has our backs!
Thank you, Dave, for being absolutely amazing!
Watch my reactions to people’s assumptions about me!
Why She Lied
Wild, Dark Times
