Category: Wilde City Press

A VVivacious Review: Orientation by Rick R. Reed

 
Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
 
OrientationRobert and his lover Ethan have drifted apart to the point that they are mere strangers living together. As things between them worsen Robert wonders if he ever truly loved anyone other than his first lover Keith who died of AIDS.
 
Then on one particularly lonely night Robert comes across a suicidal girl, Jess but it appears that there is more going on between Jess and Robert than either can guess at first. But what exactly does this sense of familiarity and love translate to between a gay man and lesbian?
 
I really think this book is not aptly named, I mean I don’t think it ever deals with orientation, I mean the characters in this book are not conflicted about their orientation and neither are they troubled by it. While this book ends on a note that kind of stresses orientation, this book is truly just a story of love.
 
It is a very engaging story. I read this book at a stretch; I just couldn’t put it down. It is a short book but what I liked about it is that the story never becomes predictable. What kept me turning the pages one after the other was the fact that I had no idea where this story would take me or how it would end.
 
Our MCs are Robert and Jessica who are both in ways dealing with loss. They bond over this fact but what truly makes them want to be with the other is the fact that there is a deeper sense of familiarity and love that underlies there meetings. Since the moment they met Jessica has felt that she is meeting someone she already knows and loves. Complicating this fact is that even though they feel love towards the other their orientations are completely incompatible. This story also follows two other characters, Ethan, Robert’s boyfriend and his drug dealer, Tony.
 
This story really focuses on its characters, you can sympathize with Robert’s desire to be blind to the obvious, to not have to face his boyfriend’s infidelities as well as his potentially lethal lifestyle and bury that under the joy of having someone else who understands his love for Keith. While Ethan’s struggle with his addiction is painful, he is wasting away and try as he might to climb out of the abyss he is in, he only ever manages to dig himself deeper. Tony’s guilt over being the reason many people have lost touch with themselves and his shame over not being able to give up the opportunity to make just a little more money is honest. And then there is Jess who is reeling form loss, is burdened by her lack of finances and struggling to understand these new feelings that have awakened in her… for a man…
 
This story really ties together the lives of these four characters and makes for a compelling read. This book is firstly about love and secondly about the human condition. It is an amazing read.
 
Cover Art by Wilde City Press. I liked the cover but I’m unsure as to how it relates to the story.
Sales Links
Books Details:
Wilde City Press
Kindle Edition, 2 edition, 192 pages
Published July 25th 2016 (first published May 7th 2008)
Original Title Orientation
ASIN B01J4KIP94

Series Recap Tour & Giveaway – Anna Butler’s Taking Shield Series

Series Recap Tour & Giveaway – Anna Butler – Taking Shield Series

Gyrfalcon (Taking Shield #1)
 
Earthís last known colony, Albion, is fighting an alien enemy. In the first of the Taking Shield series, Shield Captain Bennet is dropped behind the lines to steal priceless intelligence. A dangerous job, and Bennet doesnít need the distractions of changing relationships with his long-term partner, Joss, or with his fatheróor with Flynn, the new lover who will turn his world upside-down. He expects to risk his life. He expects the data will alter the course of the war. What he doesnít expect is that it will change his life or that Flynn will be impossible to forget.

 

Heart Scarab (Taking Shield #2)
 
Telnos is an unpleasant little planet, inhabited by religious fanatics in the festering marshlands and unregistered miners running illegal solactinium mines up in the hills. But the Maess want Telnos, and Shield Captain Bennetís job is to get out as many civilians as he canóa task that leaves him lying on Telnos while the last cutter of evacuees escapes in the teeth of the Maess invasion.
  Bennet is listed missing in action, believed dead on a planet now overrun by Maess drones. His family is grieving. His long-term partner, Joss, is both mourning and guilt-ridden. And Fleet Lieutenant Flynn? Flynn is desolate. Flynn is heart-brokenÖno. Flynn is just broken.
Makepeace (Taking Shield #3)
 
Returning to duty following his long recovery from the injuries he sustained during the events recounted in Heart Scarab, Shield Captain Bennet accepts a tour of duty in Fleet as flight captain on a dreadnought. The one saving grace is that it isnít his fatherís shipóbad enough that he canít yet return to the Shield Regiment, at least he doesnít have the added stress of commanding former lover Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, knowing the fraternisation regulations will keep them apart.
  Working on the material he collected himself on T18 three years before, Bennet decodes enough Maess data to send him behind the lines to Makepeace, once a human colony but under Maess control for more than a century. The mission goes belly up, costing Albion one of her precious, irreplaceable dreadnoughts and bringing political upheaval, acrimony and the threat of public unrest in its wake. But for Bennet, the real nightmare is discovering what the Maess have in store for humanity.
Itís not good. Itís not good at all.
Author Bio:
Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She recently moved out of the ethnic and cultural melting pot of East London to the rather slower environs of a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside, where she lives with her husband and the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo.

 

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A Stella Review: Strong Medicine by JK Hogan

RATING  4 out of 5 stars

Strong MedicineTwo men who meet in a psychiatric institution couldn’t possibly find happiness together—could they?

The world seemed to be telling disgraced former child star and singer Cameron Fox that he would never be happy again. A drunken car accident gets him sentenced to a work release program at Riverbend Behavioral Health Facility.

Reclusive, traumatized writer Jonah Radley has an entire graveyard of skeletons in his closet. Jonah regularly hospitalizes himself for psychotic episodes caused by a horrific childhood trauma, his biggest secret—one he refuses to speak about in therapy.

Jonah and Cameron form a bond inside the hospital, forged in mutual pain and hope for a better life. Once they leave the hospital, they must decide if they are brave enough to explore the intricacies of living with mental illness—and find a new normal together.

Strong Medicine was my first book by JK Hogan and it really surprised me. Reading  the blurb I have to admit I was a little scared at the start, afraid it was going to be hard to take. It was exactly what I was expecting, I hurt  so much through all the story. Still it was so worthed.

Cameron and Jonah are completely different: the first is a former child prodige, just being excluded by his whole big family from their band and sent by a judge to a behavioral health facility, where he will work for a year and learn to never drive after having drinking. Here Cameron is soon attracted to Jonah, the young man who will later steal his heart (and mine). Jonah is a survivor, each time he needs to committee himself, afraid to hurt not only himself, he comes back to life, sure he is more shattered than ever but he is working on his illness.  And hoping for a better life.

I think what I loved more were the characters, they were real and flawed just like us. And this is something I really need in books like Strong Medicine, true and painfully beautiful stories. Yes it scared me and brought tears to my eyes more than one, following Jonah in his psychic breaks wasn’t easy, seeing through his eyes what he was seeing. But I have to say everything, every single detail, was IMO well delivered, I enjoyed a lot.

This book is not for everyone, if you like sweet and romantic stories, it is really none of that. It’s  almost unbearable in some parts but the changes in Cameron and Jonah’s lives were emotional and believable. I feel to recommend Strong Medicine to everyone but please keep in mind my previous words.

I like the cover art by Wilde City Press, the style and colors are different from the usual covers and so it’s a winner to me.

Sales Links:  Wilde City Press | ARe | Amazon

BOOK DETAILS

Kindle Edition, 289 pages

Published May 18th 2016 by Wilde City Press (first published May 11th 2016)

ASIN B01FEH1GL0

Edition Language English