Category: Publishers

A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: Three Player Game (Bluewater Bay) by Jaime Samms

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Vince’s life has improved immeasurably since he moved to Bluewater Bay two years ago. He’s gone from working for a man he hated, to helping found a company he believes in. And he and boyfriend, Pete, have built a delicate balance of power between them that keeps them both grounded and thriving.

Almost, anyway.

Pete’s job on the set of Wolf’s Landing is demanding. He needs lots of downtime off set, and that’s where Vince’s firm but gentle control isn’t always enough. And for Vince, Pete’s constant high-energy needs are turning out to be more than he can handle alone.

It’s no surprise to either of them, then, that sparks fly when Vince’s coworker Lee enters the picture. Outwardly, Lee is tough and confident, but when a bad back confines him to Pete and Vince’s spare room, the cracks start to show and his desire for connection begins to peek through.

Pete and Vince both like what they see under Lee’s prickly outside, but now the three men must learn that love isn’t about beating the game—it’s about balance, trust, and letting each other in.

From the minute I started reading this, I was confused.  I felt like there was a relationship history—whether friends, lovers, or enemies—missing from the setup because we should know who they are and how they fit together.  It didn’t help that each chapter was narrated by a different MC so three alternating POVs and two of them were already a couple. Should we have known this? I still don’t know.  But even with giving that alternating POV, I wasn’t getting enough information on the men to actually care about them.  I didn’t even know what they looked like, although there was one early mention of one of them having curls and another with Asian heritage. So I studied the cover photo and I studied the blurb and I went back twice to reread my review of the first Bluewater Bay story from this author, and there I was at chapter eight, and still clueless. 

Somewhere in the middle, I realized that maybe the chef and the other “money man” they were talking about was the same couple from the first book this author wrote for this series.  I was right and discovered it was How the Cookie Crumbles, but considering I read that over eighteen months ago—which was over 500 books ago for me—and the author is using two minor secondary characters in this book, I think she would have been much better off assuming we knew nothing about these men at all, and maybe later in the story, showing us the connection.  There wasn’t enough character-building to get me invested in this threesome.  Pete and Vince were not presented as a strong couple.  I got that they were together, but I didn’t feel emotion from Vince, and Pete came across as a sex kitten looking for someone to dominate him when he needs to be less hyperactive.  Lee was rude and obnoxious throughout most of the book, so I honestly didn’t care at all what happened to him. I certainly couldn’t relate to him at all and simply wanted to move past him, whether it was his own POV chapter or one of the others. 

Toward the end, I started to feel the connection between the threesome, and overall, by the conclusion of the story I was pleased with all of them, but I can’t honestly recommend this as a good example of a ménage book.  To me, there needs to be a deep connection between all three men, and that didn’t come across as the case here.  There were connections—like the old connect-the-dots games I played as a kid—but not enough to recommend this. 

~~~~~

The cover by LC Chase was very informative in that it features three handsome men.  As I said before, I actually referred to the cover a few times to get an idea of what the characters looked like.  The threesome pictured—interestingly and maybe subconsciously?—are pictured as three separate characters facing in different directions and not all embracing one another.  Freudian? Or a portent of the contents of the book?   

Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing | Amazon

Book Details:

ebook, 263 pages
Published August 14th 2017 by Riptide Publishing (first published August 2017)
ISBN139781626496699
SeriesBluewater Bay #20

Audra North On Favorite Themes, Inspiration, and her latest novel ‘Midlife Crisis’ (author guest post and giveaway)

Midlife Crisis by Audra North
Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist L.C. Chase

Read an Excerpt/Purchase it Here at Riptide Publishing

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to have Audra North here today talking about her release Midlife Crisis.  Welcome, Audra!

✒︎

 

 

One of the reasons I loved writing Midlife Crisis is because the story is about three things I love very much: 1. self-acceptance; 2. family and friendship bonds; and 3. Texas.

In Midlife Crisis, Cam McGhee—one of the main characters—is on a fifty-year journey of self-acceptance. Because of the time in which he was born and raised, because of his familial and community background, because of so many things that go into influencing a person’s sense of self, he has spend the first half of his life wanting to accept who he is and live fully as himself, but resigning himself to never being able to. When circumstances change, and the opportunity to change his way of living is presented to him, though, he realizes the shift is easier said than done…even for a man in his fifties.

Family and friends play a big role in the book, too. Cam’s family is a source of angst and support at the same time. Dave Montoya, the other main character, has a tight-knit group of friends that looks out for him, and a sister who always has his back. For this particular story, I didn’t want to write any characters who were directly trying to undermine Cam and Dave’s journey, especially when Cam’s biggest enemy is himself—his own fears.

Oh, Texas. The third thing I love very much, though I have a complicated relationship with the state where I was born and raised (I now live in New England). Midlife Crisis takes place in Texas because of the ease of which a person can travel between rural farm communities and big cities, but still maintain that fundamental identity of Texan (it’s a thing, if any of y’all are from Texas or know Texans or watch Texans on TV). It’s an anchor point for Cam as he moves through an emotional tumultuous time in his life, and the constant of “Texas” helps him explore a new life of self-acceptance with more security.

In the end, this book is about the things I love, but at its core it’s about love, itself. Love through the self, love through connections, and love of one’s home are all secondary to the ability to love, in the first place.

 

About Midlife Crisis

 

Cam McGhee grew up like any other small-town Texas farm boy: he played football, went to church every Sunday, and married his high school sweetheart. But thirty-five years after he said “I do,” Cam finds himself nursing a beer in a gay bar, thinking about what might have been.

 

Dave Montoya is confident, self-assured, and cautiously single. But when he meets shy, uncertain, and clearly-still-not-out Cam in a coffee shop in Austin, his reservations about getting seriously involved again disappear. Cam is everything he’s looking for in a partner . . . almost, anyway.

 

No matter how much Dave wants him, and how good they are together, Cam can’t bring himself to openly embrace the life he was meant to live. After all, when his secret finally gets out, he faces the very real possibility of losing everything that kept him going for the first fifty years of his life, just like he’s feared for so long. But with a little faith—and a lot of love—his dream of living fully, truly, as himself might finally be within reach.

 

Available now from Riptide Publishing. http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/midlife-crisis

About Audra North

 

Audra North is a contemporary romance author of more than twenty romances, including the Stanton Family series, the Hard Driving series, and the Pushing the Boundaries series. She is the owner and publisher of Pink Kayak Press, which focuses on the publication of diverse romance works. Winter Rain, a Pink Kayak Press anthology, won a gold medal in the 2015 Independent Publisher Awards.

 

Audra enjoys speaking to writing groups and at industry conferences. She is also an avid jogger and loves running marathons. She has three children and lives with her family outside of Boston.

 

For more about Audra, and to sign up for her newsletter, visit audranorth.com.

 

Connect with Audra:

 

Giveaway

 

To celebrate the release of Midlife Crisis, one lucky winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 2, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

A MelanieM Review: The Lonely Merman (Landlocked Heart #1) by Kay Berrisford

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

 

It’s Friday afternoon, and the last thing Ben wants to be doing is trudging through a wet forest in search of a public hazard. But duty calls, and turns out more exciting than Ben imagined when he encounters a magical ruin, an enchanted pool, and Lyle—a merman who’s cursed to be landlocked many miles from the sea.

Lyle is flamboyant and exciting—he’s got tentacles, for goodness sake!—and Ben falls hard. But Lyle’s been hurt before and finds trust difficult, refusing even to reveal how to break the curse that imprisons him. Ben’s just an ordinary guy, and can’t help wondering if he can ever be the hero Lyle needs.

The Lonely Merman (Landlocked Heart #1) by Kay Berrisford has a terrific premise behind it and some wonderful mythology that the author has created for her story.  I trudged along with Ben  and tumbled headlong into a magical place, haunted by a cursed being waiting for his forever love.

How could you not want to read about that?

And for most of this story, Kay Berrisford has me hooked.  The plight of the forest, the woods surrounding the pool and the temple because of Ben and the way in which he endangered them all had me on the edge of my seat.  That was so well done.  A little less was the quick relationship between Ben and Lyle.  Really Ben seemed halfway more irritated than smitten, but maybe that was me.

But the back history and story Berrisford created for Lyle is a superb one.  I really wish she had given more page space to this portion of the story and world building because she absolutely held my interest here.  This is also where I felt let down at the end.  Everything that occurs to Lyle at the end happens “off stage” as it were and we are cheated out of a huge element of this story, an important one.

So yes, the main characters get their HFN, yes I love the idea of the story and so many of the elements here I felt it warranted a 3 star rating. But there are also enough holes that it came perilously close to 2 as well.  That’s for all the sections of the story that the author didn’t deliver and should  have been included to give the reader a satisfactory closure to the story and Lyle’s part in it.

The title indicates that this is the first in a series so I’m curious if it’s going to pick up Ben and Lyle’s story from the ending of this one, an uncertain one at that or set off on another trajectory all together.  I’m invested enough that I’ll pick up that story to find out.  For all you fantasy lovers, there’s enough here that if you’re looking for a quick read with some interesting aspects to it, The Lonely Merman (Landlocked Heart #1) by Kay Berrisford just might be the thing for you.

Cover art by J. Ang is interesting but almost too simple for this story.

Sales Links:  Less Than Three Press | Amazon

Book Details:

ebook
Published July 8th 2017 by Less Than Three Press
ISBN139781684310395
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesLandlocked Heart #1