I’m reading and enjoying some books by authors who may not necessarily as well known as some of the other authors I’ve reviewed in the past.
The first book I read that I really enjoyed is Code Name: Nina’s Choice by Natasza Waters. This is the third book in her warrior series and boy, are these books FUN. The books follow a team of Navy Seals (because in Romance land only the Special Forces count) and the women they fall in love with. The first two books are about Admiral Grayson Thane and Kayla, who is a Canadian analyst that started working for the team and has some serious emotional issues to work through. Aside from the romance, there is an overarching storyline about a serial killer who targets women in the base that the Navy Seal Team Alpha One are stationed at. This third book is about Mace Callahan and Nina- characters who I was introduced to and fell in love with in the previous books. The author does have some sort of background working at the Coronado Base (in San Diego, California) where most of the story takes place so I found the military jargon etc to be pretty realistic.
Everything else though? High emotion, screaming suspense, over the top drama- it’s almost like reading a military based soap opera and I LOVED IT. The characters are very likeable and the whole concept of “no man gets left behind” and teamwork gets taken to almost superhero, GI Joe levels. SO. MUCH. FUN. I actually got a book hangover from this book; it has that special crack quality to it. I may have to stalk this author’s page until the next book comes out. Think Kristen Ashley writing military suspense novels and you get the general flavour of these books.
Another book that I just started and am enjoying is Prisoner by Lia Silver. I discovered this author after listening to Jane from Dear Author talk about it on the Dear Bitches Smart Authors Podcast. This book is about a wolf-shifter marine who gets coerced into working for a top secret government laboratory as an assassin. It was hard to type that last sentence with a straight face but this is paranormal romance, people so realistic does not fall anywhere within our sphere of reading.
I’m only 60% into the book but so far am enjoying the dialogue between the hero and heroine. There is a fun sense of humor threaded throughout the story even though the premise seems a little grim. To give you an example, the hero’s werewolf scent name is Lechon which is Filipino for roast pig which really shows that the author doesn’t take herself or her characters too seriously as that’s about the least sexy code name you can come up with in my humble opinion.
I also like how the hero isn’t this perfect badass who can defeat 25 armed men singlehandedly, all the while never breaking a sweat on his perfect, tall, built, secret billionaire playboy philanthropist’s body. This hero is far from perfect. He’s of medium height (a mortal sin in romance land), suffers from debilitating dyslexia and talks too much when he’s stressed. He’s also kind and strong, darkly handsome and unfailingly loyal. I’m enjoying the slow build into romance and the friendship between the hero and heroine is a lot of fun to read. I can’t wait to finish the book and have signed up to this author’s newsletter so I get notified when the next book in the series comes out.
A sidenote is that the covers for BOTH these books are really ugly, like fugly ugly, and I almost didn’t buy them because of the supreme el cheapo effect of the cover art. In this case, do NOT judge the books by their covers. I’d give a solid 4 out of 5 stars for both them.
In contrast, another book that had a pretty decent cover but one that I found to be a bit of a let- down was the third book in the Weird girls series by Cecy Robson, Cursed by Destiny.
This is the third book in the series and I really loved the first book and seriously liked the second. This series revolves around Celia Wird and her three sisters who all have strange powers due to a curse that a witch put on their family. Celia is a human who can shift into a tiger but also has the ability to pass through matter (cool right?). I really enjoyed the world building and learning about Celia and her sisters in the first book. I loved the sense of family and closeness and pack dynamics that I got there. I didn’t really like the love triangle between Celia, Aric the werewolf and Misha the master vampire (Twilight flashback). I didn’t mind it so much in the first two books because she clearly was with Aric and Misha was just so much fun to picture in my head. The third book though is where it gets a bit annoying.
Suffice it to say that Aric and Celia have a bit of a star-crossed love going as he is a pure-blooded shifter and must mate another shifter for the good of his race. It’s all very plausible in the context of the story and I really felt for the couple in the first two books. For some reason though, it just annoyed the heck out of me in the third book. I did at one point roll my eyes and wished with all my might that Aric would just get over himself already and that Celia would get over him already for the love of all that is furry. That said, the rest of the book was very well-written and I still am invested enough in the series to want to read the fourth book. So although I didn’t like it as much as the first two books I would still give this one three out of five stars.
Do you have any new authors you’re excited to talk about?
romancefangirl 