Review: The Lockwood Chronicles Episode 1: A Chance Meeting

The Lockwood Chronicles Episode 1: A Chance Meeting by Katrina LaFond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an entertaining, quick read that had elements of paranormal romance, action, and mystery. All of that as jammed into a short couple hundred pages (hard to tell on the kindle) that I actually thought had wrapped up a few times along the way.

Madeline is on holiday when she literally runs into an attractive young man. Alexander is a vampire and is immediately smitten with Madeline. They arrange a date and hit it off before their passion ends with him feeding off of her. While he has her knocked out, however, his arch nemesis shows up, threatening his new happiness.

Ultimately, decisions must be made in the heat of battle that end up changing all of their lives. There's a number of battle scenes, some relatively dark, but we wind up with a somewhat satisfying ending. It is definitely a cliffhanger of sorts, so if that bothers you, you might want to skip this one.

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Review: Vampires Need Pedicures Too

Vampires Need Pedicures Too by C.C. Kelly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This short story was pretty confusing. What was I just reading? Why did it take so many confusing turns? What should have been a simple dating story ended up leaving me... befuddled.

Holly is a librarian who has a friend that drags her shopping and then to a speed dating event. When they show up, Holly is not at all attracted to the first guy in the line, who ends up being a vampire and going on and on in no fashion of order for a while. Then it ends. I don't know how else to describe it other than ... confusing. I almost stopped reading at one point. I get that short stories can kind of do their own thing, but this was sadly not entertaining.

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Review: Reap

Reap by M. Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow - I can't believe this book doesn't have more reviews or ratings. What I believed would be a simple short story ended up being a fully engaging tale of guardian angels, reapers, and all sorts of other mythological beings. If you have this already on your kindle, it is definitely worth checking out. I'm sad that this is not still available on amazon or I'd review it there, too.

Sophie is a girl who has moved around all her life. At her latest school, however, she's greeting with a sense of deja vu when another boy ends up being "the new kid" alongside her. Cooper, it seems, is hiding some things, but these two hit it off dramatically well in the short amount of time they get together. After some wild reveals and some heartbreaking choices, Sophie finds herself alone again - but not for long! Another new kid shows up with a bad boy image and a wicked motorcycle. Sophie tries to fight it, but she's drawn to him, too.

This new kid, however, has all sorts of other secrets. Turns out, Sophie is just a magnet for the otherworldly. With all the twists and turns and emotional drama, this read like a full length epic novel but was only a short afternoon's reading time. I loved the world that the author built and found myself rooting for this unlikely pair. Too bad we don't get to further explore it! I was sad to see this book end.

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Review: Coffee And Vampires

Coffee And Vampires by J.A. Fielding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was one of my favorite short reads so far, in my reading blitz at the end of the year. Sadly, when I went to copy this to amazon, it looks like it is no longer available. I guess that serves me right for letting it sit on my kindle for about 5 years before reading it.

This is a collection of individual stories that all mesh together into one big (short) book. We start with Page, a barista with some bad luck when it comes to trip and fall hazards. Her luck, however, changes dramatically when a nurse, Nicolas, comes to her rescue. He gets her home safe and ends up asking her out. Page's love life rapidly becomes too crowded, however, when her ex-boyfriend and werewolf shows up trying to stake a claim on her. From there, Page's life starts to spiral further into the paranormal world.

Nicolas, the seemingly normal, nice guy turns out to be a vampire who (luckily) is able to get her a job away from her stalker ex. The only catch? It's also a paranormal coffee shop. These two love birds don't have it easy, and anyone who pairs up with them is destined to encounter some hard to explain phenomena, but Page and Nicolas do eventually get their HEA. While I'm not usually a fan of the shorter stories, this one had me hooked from the beginning. Something about Page and her wild ride through the paranormal world had me rapidly flipping pages. I wish there was more!

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Review: Preternatural: Stealing her Future / A Girl's Best Friend / Calming the Wolf

Preternatural: Stealing her Future / A Girl's Best Friend / Calming the Wolf by Cara B. Connor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very strange collection of stories. While it is called an erotic collection, sometimes it felt like the smut was very forced and out of place, almost an afterthought. Usually that doesn't bother me, but using phrases like "love juice" or "love stick" made these scenes seem almost like a joke.

The three stories really don't have anything to do with one another, but are grouped together in this collection. The first story is about a horrible man who is transformed into a dog to try to learn his lesson. Spoiler alert - he doesn't, but he still gets to have sex with the girl. Not sure what the takeaway is here but it kind of bothered me that the main character is a girl who is willing to accept whatever scraps he throws her way.

The second story is about a man who suffers with a werewolf curse. Rather than coming clean to his fiancee, he sneaks off to change undiscovered until she tracks him down. They break up and he suffers, then they somehow end up back together, then not, then they talk about becoming swingers? Very strange.

The last story was probably my favorite of the three. A female thief is tasked with stealing a chest from a rich recluse. While trying to steal the chest, she ends up caught up in an ancient love story involving reincarnation. I found that aspect more interesting than any of others.

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Review: Personal Demon

Personal Demon by Jacqueline Czel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This short read has the potential to be a really good paranormal romance. There's one thing that really bothered me all the way through, though - it needs a good run through a grammar and spelling program. I'm not sure if the author's primary language is not english or what really happened here, but there were often words out of order or missing entirely. Sometimes the wrong word was used in place of a similar one. It hurt my overall enjoyment of the book.

That being said, the story itself was not unlike your typical paranormal romance. I joined this series having not read book 1 in this series. I don't think that really impacted my overall enjoyment (see the first paragraph for my real issues). The world itself was interesting and unique, with a bit of a sci fi twist on the average otherworld-type story. Merle is a very serious scientist who also happens to be a demon. His brother's new mate runs a great bbq restaurant and one of the waitresses ends up catching both his and his inner demon's eye.

Turns out, demons don't really do the whole courtship thing. Instead, Merle ends up bonding Cally to him pretty quickly, relatively rescuing her from her life of poverty and protecting her from her potentially abusive ex. There's some smut, some evil trolls, and a HEA. If the author could just edit this book, it would inspire me to continue reading the series.

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Review: Mated To The Werewolf King

Mated To The Werewolf King by Alena Des
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book had a lot of ups and downs, but read as some sort of epic paranormal romance with a fated mates twist. It was clearly setting up some side stories because we met *a lot* of characters along the way. I admit to having some trouble getting behind the main characters for the first half of the book, but by the end, I knew I had to find out what happened.

Belle is the daughter of werewolves who suddenly finds out that the demon lord is out to claim her. Oh, and she's adopted. The surprises just keep coming for her as she's abruptly kidnapped by the werewolf king (who is a jerk). Honestly, their relationship leaves a lot to be desired, but I usually find that with fated mates. Keith (the werewolf jerk) is pretty convinced that Belle is somehow bespelling him so they go on a journey to visit the witches. From there, things take some pretty disastrous turns (and dark turns, too - beware, torture ahead).

While Belle goes through her own drama, Keith eventually comes to grips with his being fated mate to Belle. There's prophecies, bad guys, political drama, girl drama, secret family members, people you think are dead who are not dead, and so much betrayal that I started to expect it at every turn. This was no short read - it took us on a full tour of most of the worlds, introduced us to most of the kings, and had some pretty big fight scenes. If you're looking for a deep dive into the world of "the kings," this is definitely for you. Certainly not a light read, you really have to push through to get your HEA reward at the end.

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