My New Review

Hey folks, my newest review on the Paranormal Romance Guild site has just dropped! Go check it out at

http://www.paranormalromanceguild.com/reviewskendallgrey.htm

And go get the book, it's good!

Crimson Midnight by Amos Cassidy

Humans, vampires, werewolves, witches, warlocks, and demons. The whole cake and the icing too! What a wonderful treat for fans of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. 

Rose has to get away from the stress at home. Mom is uncommunicative from a mysterious illness. Dad is busy but hovers. Rose wants freedom and has found work in London, teaching self-defense in a local gym. She plans of living with her Aunt Flo and her cousins Erin and Roman. Her friend Faye is coming along and has plans to live in a group house. It is going to be a grand adventure.

What she doesn’t realize is that the world is full of more than just humans. Her cousin, Roman, is a werewolf in a pack of werewolves, his friends Raven, Harold, Kris, and Damon are all werewolves and hanging out at Aunt Flo’s house. Roman is dating Thistle, who is a vampire. 

Other characters are disappearing, there are things stalking the supernatural of London. The leadership of the werewolves and vampires are watching and trying to figure out who is doing it. Rose is finding out that she is….

Amos Cassidy’s first book in the Crimson Series has more twists and turns than a garden walk on the side of a mountain. I had to make sure to remember what each character was doing and who they had been with the last time I read about them. The story weaves in and out between characters and groups before racing toward a very fast and unexpected ending. It left me breathless and wanting to go back a few chapters and see if I missed anything because what I read was so hard to believe it happened that way. It’s not a bad ending, it’s more such a surprise that I was thinking “They did what?” as I stopped reading (and tried to remember to breathe).

I want to read more about Rose and her world. I cannot wait until the next book comes out in the fall to read about how things go from where she left it. I do recommend this book for late teens to adults. There is no blatant sex, although there is some same-sex action and there is violence.

Broken by David Burton

Katherine Gregory’s mother is dead and Katherine is finding it hard to mourn her. Never really close to her, her little brother inherited the estate and Katherine received nothing in the will. So she was very surprised when, three days before her twenty-fifth birthday, she gets a letter from her mother that has a key to a safety deposit box full of documents; documents that prove that Katherine was adopted to keep her brother from being the oldest child who would die when he turned 25. This curse would fall on Katherine instead, as it had the firstborn of every generation going back five generations. 

Katherine and her friend Chris fly to England to visit her Aunt Marigold to try to find some answers about the curse and what it means for her. She has been seeing little green people all her life, her mother has had her believe she is insane and had her on medication. Aunt Marigold tells her that she is not insane, that she sent the little man to her, that she sent Chris to her, and that she needs to… Then she dies without explaining further. 

Katherine has to unravel the mystery about who she is using magical emerald earrings, Chris, and an old ex-boyfriend name Jonathan as she races across the English countryside one step ahead of the blonde woman who wants to kill her as she has killed Katherine’s family before her.

David Burton has created a tight, wonderfully woven tale of fairy courts, time travel, and special powers in Broken. A richly imagined novella, the story does not lag at any point and I became very interested in how Katherine was going to find out what was behind the Gregory family curse and what happened to her father, grandfather, and great-grandfathers. The ending was a twist I was not expecting, which was quite a nice surprise and left me wondering if Burton didn’t have another book in this world coming out. Broken is a fun novella and an easy read.

Neophyte by Emmalee Aple

Eighteen year old Addyson White wakes up dead just before graduation. Someone came into the school cafeteria and shot her three days ago. This was not her plan for life and now she’s with her friend Hunter, living in a beach house with four other guys. These guys just happen to be angels and Addyson is now a Neophyte, the beginning stage of becoming an angel. 

Everett is the leader of the “link,” which is the name of the grouping of angels who take neophyte angels and raise and protect them for the five years it takes for the human to change to a full angel. Then they go off to be trained in whatever angelic job they are going to have. Wilhelm is his second and both angels were born as angels. With them are Hunter and the twins Graham and Greysan, all former neophytes who are now helping teach Addyson about her new life as well as trying to protect her from things that could harm her.

Their biggest challenge to Addy’s safety is another Link, formed by fallen angels who have gray wings, unlike the angels with Addyson who have white wings. Addyson is suddenly grabbed; she thinks by Greysan and carried off. But the real Greysan gives chase and ends up killing the fallen angel, which triggers a war between the two links.

Neophyte is a young adult novel. The angels Hunter and Addyson go to school, have homework, and go to prom. There is some romance involved but it’s confined to kissing. It starts out slow but quickly begins to build the story of Addyson’s new life and the choices she has to make. Emmalee Aple has made her heroine a strong girl who is not easily intimidated by the other angels of either link. She is kept in the dark by her own link but she keeps trying to find out what they know and demands to be trained to protect herself. There are times when she almost seems to be temperamental in some of her actions and demands.

This is Aple’s first book and the first of the Neophyte series. The book flows well, is well written with action and descriptions. The book ends with a well-done cliff-hanger and this book me interested enough to look for the sequel once it comes out.

Blind Sight: Throught the Eyes of Aniela Dawson

NOTE: I am a bit behind on writing some of the reviews. I needed to take a break and rest so I'll be doing some catching up. I also have a couple of things I want to blog about so, hopefully, things will be busier up here soon. Thanks for hanging on with me!...Charlayne


Aniela is Princess of Edaion, an island where people who have magic come to live. Her father and mother rule, her brother is being groomed to take over and her sister is the prima donna of the family. There is family drama going on, and all Aniela wants to do is graduate high school, keep her orphanage school going, and find a job that will let her have time to do what she wants. But her mother has other ideas and pushes her, demands she do other things, and throws tantrums when things do not go her way.

Aniela befriends Odette, a new student who is blind and who is trying to find out what her magic is. She draws mysterious pictures and has seizures. Her brother, Leocardo, worries about her and joins forces with Aniela to find out what is going on with his sister. The deeper they go, the stranger the story gets.

This is one of two stories about Aniela and Leocardo, the other being seen through Leocardo's eyes. I did not read that one and I'm curious as to how the story changed.

This book started out slow and I found it tedious as the family dynamics were settled and all the beginnings of the story were laid out. Since this is YA, I'm not sure that it will hold a young reader's attention to the point where the story begins to get really moving with all the challenges to Odette and Aniela. There were questions about how Odette and Leo came to be in Edaion and what Leo's own magic is.

I think that some of my questions might be answered in the other book. I wonder if this story might have been better presented in a double-book issue instead of separate books. Especially as it is a YA, it may be confusing to readers to have to look up and buy two books to get the entire story.

I do think the author has a good grasp of writing and flow, it was easy to read and everything seemed to be in place. On the publisher's point, I had a problem with the typeface being san-serif (arial) and it seemed that random words were bold and larger type for no apparent reason. This was distracting and can only be placed on the head of the editors and publishers.

I liked it, I just wish I got the whole story.