Category: Fiction

A Love For All Time by Bertrice Small

Fiction

If you were intrigued with Skye O’Malley’s younger brother, Conn, in All The Sweet Tomorrows, you are going to love seeing much more of him in A Love For All Time, which chronicles how he was introduced and married to his wife, Aiden St. Michael. This book almost didn’t happen, as the author had already written This Heart Of Mine, which centers around Skye and Adam’s daughter, Velvet. But Small received so many fan letters stating that they wanted more of Conn that she decided she had to give it to them. Even though it wasn’t planned, this story fits in perfectly with the timeline, and I am a stickler for continuity. 

Aiden is a shy, cloistered English heiress who is sent to court after her fathers death in order to find a husband so that they might carry on her family name. Her few short months here are lonely, as she is an older unmarried woman in her time, she is intelligent, and she does not flaunt her wealth with fashionable clothing and fine jewels, all of which make her invisible to the mostly extroverted people residing there. By a stroke of luck, and a surprising bit of boldness, she is married to the most handsome man at Elizabeth Tudors court, and it is at this point in time that she finally begins to bloom. Conn and Aiden live in bliss and fall in love, but after only a few months of happiness together the two are separated when a couple of evil men come up with an evil plan which results in Aiden being kidnapped and sold into slavery. 

You do get a happy ending, but it is not without a great deal of turmoil in order for the lovers to get there. I like this one better than its predecessor because even though our leading lady finds herself a captive, her time in bondage is not as frustrating as it was on our last journey with Skye. This is a book I would pick up many, many more times.

All The Sweet Tomorrows by Bertrice Small

Fiction

The second book in the Skye O’Malley saga, this book again follows the life and adventures of the heroine. Out of all the books in the series, and the legacy books as well, this is the one I have read the least and am therefore the least familiar with. Having just finished it, I cannot recall why I have never tended to reach for this one. 

When we last left Skye in the first book, titled after the very woman, she was on her way home with her best friend, Adam, and her now fourth husband, Niall. Tragedy seems to follow Skye as this is how All The Sweet Tomorrows opens up, with Niall believed to be dead. After many months, which include a terribly mismatched political marriage, and a few liaisons with lovers, it is discovered that Niall actually survived the attempted murder. Skye then goes on a risky rescue mission in order to save him. A good chunk of the middle of this tale is why I don’t consider it a favorite of mine, which includes Skye’s failed fifth marriage and her adventures in the East, as it is just so incredibly frustrating to read about the things that happen to this woman. Her fifth husband is a cruel and unusual man with whom she tries to find some peace and common ground with, as she cannot see herself ever loving him. In the East she is forced to become a harem slave in order to save Niall and the things that happen to her are degrading and barbarous, you truly end up hating her vicious master, Kedar. 

The very beginning and the majority of the end of the book are why I decided that I do love it. You get to learn more about Skye’s extended family as she actually gets to interact with a lot of them for once rather than only seeing them briefly in between her many adventures. And we are also introduced to her youngest brother, Conn, who is one of the main characters in the third book, which I will be reading next week. So if you loved the first book, continue with the second, because you will want to make your way through the entire series. 

I have also included a picture in which I marked all the good spicy scenes, as this is a historical romance.

Never Kiss A Bad Boy by Nora Flite

Fiction

A dark, unconventional romance that is rooted in revenge is the premise of Never Kiss A Bad Boy. The story begins and ends with murder, and everything in between fills us in on how our male leads, Kite and Jacob, became hit men, and why the female main character, Marina, is out to kill. If you couldn’t guess it from the phrase ‘male leads’, this is a triad tale. I liked it far better than the Dark Elite series I read several weeks ago. I enjoyed there being only two male love interests rather than a harem of four, and the plot was better besides.

That being said, I was disappointed in the number of grammatical and punctuation errors that I found in the text. Equally disappointing was the fact that not only was the antagonist’s last name misspelled once, the main female character’s first name was also spelled incorrectly one time. Did the author incorrectly spell her own characters names more than once, or were they somehow messed up during editing or printing? Either way, I find this carelessness sloppy. 

On top of that, I found the format to be unsightly, the margins were incredibly large, taking up about a third of the surface of the page all around. It made for odd sentence spacing and large gaps in paragraphs, which I also found to be too numerous. The chosen font and size of the text I found unfitting of the genre, the text being large and ordinary when something smaller and more feminine or delicate would have looked a lot better. I might not have even made such a big fuss over the errors I mentioned in the previous paragraph had the font and format been more pleasing to the eye. It’s not just that the story has to be good, it has to be visually pleasing for the reader, in my opinion. 

Besides seeing obvious room for improvement, I will say that I might read this again.  The spicy scenes are probably the most well written parts of the book, which is good since that is the genre this book falls within. They are lengthy, which I like, the language can be just slightly vulgar, and the descriptions are just right to give you a good visual, for those with very active imaginations. I did mark the scenes with post it notes just in case I want to skip over everything else, which I can see myself doing because I can also see myself becoming irritated if I notice even more errors during a re-read. I feel as though I am slowly making my way towards finding my perfect book or series in this genre, I just have to pay my dues by reading some not so great pieces first.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Fiction

I picked up this book because when I saw the cover, it haunted me. It’s just a simple washed out picture of a woman, but the one strip of paper ripped in front of her mouth left me with an eerie feeling that I wanted to go away but at the same time craved to feel more of. I had to include a picture, maybe you will feel what I felt when you see the artwork. I hoped that I would find a worthy story inside that gave me the same feeling as the cover.

It’s a very mysterious tale that begins with a diary entry, which leads you to expect more entries, but then the next chapter is from the point of view of someone else. You learn about the woman in the diary through the eyes of her psychotherapist for a while before you get to read from her point of view again. It goes back and forth a little bit, not in an irritating way, but in a way that makes you want to get to the next part so you can unravel the mystery. I read this in three days because I couldn’t wait to see what was going on. I did figure out what was happening a little while before it was revealed, which disappointed me a bit, not because I figured it out, but because I really enjoy being surprised and I don’t think of myself as someone who is good at piecing clues together. Maybe I am just getting better at it because I have been reading much more frequently lately. 

I do recommend this book. It was an easy read, but it kept you thinking and it made you want to stay up late in an attempt to try to finish it before going to sleep.

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Fiction

I have to say, I was expecting a murder mystery when I read the title of this book and the blurb on the back. I was not expecting an existential tale of a woman losing her mind in three days. It starts off insidiously enough with an older woman finding a note on a secluded path which admits to someone being aware of a murder. You start to believe that this is going to be an exciting tale of an ordinary woman solving the riddle of who killed a girl, but then you reach a point when you realize there never was a girl or a murderer. You get attached to the story that the old woman makes up in her head, you want to know more about the girl that she is conjuring up. She makes the girl sound intriguing, you want to know why she was murdered, and by who, and where her body is. But none of it is real. It was honestly pretty disappointing for me.

Besides being disappointed in the lack of an actual murder mystery, I was left wanting to know more about the main character, Vesta. The little bits we learn about her life before she moved to this desolate town leaves you curious, especially with regards to her vivid imagination. That she comes up with this story about a girl so quickly and dreams up all these intricate little details about her life is extraordinary. But if you consider that she is quite alone and lonely, and is quite possibly going mad, then the fact that she is imagining everything isn’t quite so amazing. The mind can go to strange places when your days are empty and you don’t have anything to look forward to. On top of the fact that she seems to resent the life her recently deceased husband forced her to live, coupled with the fact that at her age there is not a lot of hope to live out her forgotten dreams, it’s no wonder that she becomes absolutely insane. 

I’d recommend this book for deep thinkers, because I was certainly wondering about the state of Vesta’s mind. This book may only appeal to people who are interested in life’s deep questions and psychology, because I think the only way I was able to find a certain enjoyment in this book was by trying to work out what was happening to her mind and how a professional would diagnose her mental illness. I’ve read better existential crisis type books, so I don’t think I am going to save this one for my collection. And a final thought, not being a huge fan of this book has not deterred me from being curious about the author’s other novels, I am looking forward to reading something else by this woman.