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A MelanieM Review: What It Looks Like by Matthew J. Metzger

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

What It Looks LikeEli Bell is the only son of a police chief inspector and a forensic scientist. He’s grown up wonky in a world that only deals with the straight and narrow — and his new boyfriend isn’t helping.

Rob Hawkes is six feet of muscle, tattoos, and arrest warrants. A career criminal and a former guest of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, he’d rather hit Eli’s parents than sit down to dinner with them. One wrong move, and Rob could destroy Eli — and his family — without a second thought.

But this isn’t what it looks like.

Rob’s not in control here — and Eli’s the one to blame.

What It Looks Like by Matthew J. Metzger is one of those books that took a while for me to finish and even longer to write a review for.  Why?  Because I couldn’t figure out exactly why I couldn’t connect to the book and the characters.

Its well-written and the story certainly emotional and pertinent to the times.  So why couldn’t I get involved?

It kept coming back to the characters.  I’m just not sure I liked them very much.

The character of Eli Bell, which will hold a few surprises for the reader, has had a childhood that has been emotionally overwhelming at times in a family not always supportive and understanding.  He’s realistically drawn as a character but…and here’s my but…I  got  tired of Eli quickly.  He covers the same ground in his arguments, shows little growth as a person for the longest time.  Kudos to the writer for making Eli real, but after a while…I wanted to put the book down because scene after scene I knew what was coming.

Rob Hawkes was a little more interesting but again not by much.  A bad boy by history and now by his own choices (and need), he comes off as going over the same landscape as Eli does. He looks after his younger brother, comes from a troubled, criminal family known to the police. He’s angry that Eli’s dad hates him. He hates Eli’s dad. You know the drill.  Its a pattern.  Perhaps that’s the authors intent.  Both are stuck in a pattern, even with each other.  Unfortunately, so is the reader.  At least that’s how I felt.

About 75 to 80 percent through the story, I started to care about them.  Everything turned over for me.  I liked their relationship.  Things that felt needlessly tedious were dropped in favor of change and the story seemed fresh again.

There is considerable amount about Eli and his sexuality. Also Eli and Rob’s relationship includes a huge amount of bdsm content.  As this makes up a large part of the story, if this is not your thing, I would take that into consideration when thinking about reading this story. Metzger does fold it realistically into Eli and Rob’s relationship, less so when its occurring at Eli’s house.

As I stated, I really went back and forth with this review in my head.  There are some wonderful scenes and elements here, most of which I felt came towards the last part of the story.  There the book became more concise, the narrative pared down to what mattered most (at least to me) and I could connect emotionally to the characters and their relationship.

You may feel otherwise.

Its the first book I’ve read by this author and I certainly look forward to reading more.  What It Looks Like by Matthew J. Metzger is a well-written book that left me with a conflicted review.  Maybe that’s as the author intended.  Pick it up and decided for yourself.

Cover art definitely shows a inked bad boy.  Nice but standard.

Sales Links

   JMS Books

 

 

 

Book Details:

ebook
Published August 20th 2016 by JMS Books LLC
ISBN139781634862288
Edition LanguageEnglish

In the Spotlight: Matthew J. Metzger’s What It Looks Like (giveaway)

Matthew J. Metzger – What It Looks Like

Author: Matthew J Metzger
 
Release Date: August 20 2016
 
Buy Links:  Amazon US  Amazon UK  JMS Books  
 
Add to Goodreads here.
 
Length: 80,615 words
 
Blurb
 

Eli Bell is the only son of a police chief inspector and a forensic scientist. He’s grown up wonky in a world that only deals with the straight and narrow — and his new boyfriend isn’t helping.Rob Hawkes is six feet of muscle, tattoos, and arrest warrants. A career criminal and a former guest of Her Majesty’s Prison Service, he’d rather hit Eli’s parents than sit down to dinner with them. One wrong move, and Rob could destroy Eli — and his family — without a second thought.

But this isn’t what it looks like.

Rob’s not in control here — and Eli’s the one to blame.

 

 
Author Bio
 
Matthew J. Metzger is the front for a British-born author dragged up in the south of England as part of a typical nuclear family with three kids, a mortgage, and no dog because a dog would get hair on the carpet. A brief escape to the north to study focused his writing from daydreaming rambles to his first novel, Our Last Summer. It is unquestionably better than the dissertation he produced at the same time for his university degree, but probably not as inventive as the excuses he provided for missing classes so often.

Matthew has since returned to the London area, and therefore lives mostly on the public transport. He suspects that his next few pieces will probably involve homicidal characters on the London Underground.

For more information, please visit matthewjmetzger.wordpress.com.
 

Giveaway

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A MelanieM Review: Full Circle: Forester Triad Act Three (Tales of the Forest #3) by Blaine D. Arden

Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Full Circle“I have great responsibilities, but my path ahead is as foggy and blurred as the path behind me.”

With forester Taruif freed, Kelnaht has claimed him openly at Solstice before tribe and Ma’terra as his partner, but with their third, Ianys, bound by an old promise, their triad is still incomplete. Sneaking around puts the most strain on Ianys. He and Kelnaht must keep their relationship a secret or he will lose his daughter, Atèn.

When several children fall ill with more than a summer bug, truth seeker Kelnaht is assigned once more to investigate. What he finds is deadly and threatens the life of every underage child in the tribe, including Atèn. Then a wounded traveller is found in the forest, left to die after a vicious attack.

With Taruif and his apprentice on the hunt for a cure, Kelnaht focusses on the attacks, but the clues are few and more children are infected. Nothing seems to connect until both the traveller and Atèn dream of the same grey-haired elf. Driven by fear for his daughter, Ianys pulls away from his lovers. Kelnaht can only pray Ma’terra will guide him to a solution that brings them all together and keeps Atèn safe from harm.

I reviewed this story when I was happily reporting on the release of the trilogy in one volume, A Triad in Three Acts: The Complete Forester Trilogy
by Blaine D. Arden. There I said…”

“Its outstanding.  Full Circle: Forester Triad Act Three (Tales of the Forest, #3) starts off with first one, then another of the village’s children falling ill.  A heartbreaking scenario, especially true when the village has lost their children in the not too distant past. Then it sweeps up our triad, newly back together but keeping it a secret when Ianys’ daughter falls ill as well.  Yes, another mystery to solve, one so close to the heart for all three lovers that it threatens to tear them apart once more.

Arden makes us feel every bit of the direness of the situation, the pain of the parents, the building anxiety of the village as they wait to see whose children will fall next and the mystery as to where the illness is coming from.  You will be there in the square with them as the fear and anger builds, the hopelessness too.  Its such an incredible story because it also is where all the answers to the triad’s problems will arrive and all the history will be finally revealed.  Really, its one of those page turners I just couldn’t put down once I started.”

But that really didn’t explain the twisting, complicated relationships between Taruif, Kelnaht and Ianys I had come to understand and love (it took 3 stories but I finally arrived at wanting them to be together). Arden display of family dynamics at all levels of functionality, to the extremely poor to the tight knit, carries the reader to emotional highs and lows along with the characters themselves.  I’m not often a fan of menage or M/M/M but here I not only believed in the relationship but hoped for their future together.

Arden also had created a long ancient history and evil that had followed the village through the tales as well.  Its wrapped up here but not without grief and loss that will tear at your heart.  That the evil is rooted in something that you will be able to understand and even momentarily connect with is what helps define this as a 5 star story.  The evil is not a one dimensional being but one of such depth and authenticity that any reader will be able to recognize the pain at the center of it all.  Its makes everything that happens all the more tragic.

There is also a sensuality to the story.  These men love each other, even when one is angry and missing from their triad.  When they flow back together its sexy, sensual, and magic.

I loved this story.  Its was in turn…sad, bitter, sensual, exhilarating, heart-stopping suspenseful and finally full of love and joy.  It pulled everything together in an ending I loved.  I couldn’t and wouldn’t ask for more.

Book cover by Simone is lovely and perfect for the story.

Sales Links

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Book Details

ebook, 1st Edition, 140 pages
Published August 15th 2016 by Cayendi Press
ISBN139789082296679
Edition LanguageEnglish
URLhttp://www.cayendi.nl/?page_id=195
SeriesTales of the Forest #3, The Forester Trilogy #3
CharactersKelnaht, Taruif, Ianys

Riptide Publishing’s Tour and Giveaway: Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

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Looking for Group by Alexis Hall
Riptide Publishing
Cover by Simoné

Read an Excerpt/Buy It Here

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Riptide Publishing’s tour and giveaway for Alexis Hall’s Looking for Group.  Check it out below and don’t forget to leave a comment and be entered in the giveaway.

About Looking for Group

So, yeah, I play Heroes of Legend, y’know, the MMO. I’m not like obsessed or addicted or anything. It’s just a game. Anyway, there was this girl in my guild who I really liked because she was funny and nerdy and a great healer. Of course, my mates thought it was hilarious I was into someone I’d met online. And they thought it was even more hilarious when she turned out to be a boy IRL. But the joke’s on them because I still really like him.

And now that we’re together, it’s going pretty well. Except sometimes I think Kit—that’s his name, sorry I didn’t mention that—spends way too much time in HoL.  I know he has friends in the guild, but he has me now, and my friends, and everyone knows people you meet online aren’t real. I mean. Not Kit. Kit’s real. Obviously.

Oh, I’m Drew, by the way. This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff.

About Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the 21st century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.

He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.

He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a 17th century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.

He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.

Connect with Alexis:

LookingForGroup_TourBanner

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Looking for Group, one lucky winner will receive their choice of 3 ebooks from Alexis Hall’s backlist. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 3, 2016. 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: Magnified (Magnified #1) by Mell Eight

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Magnified by Mell EightOn her deathbed, Yani’s Great Grandmother reveals she has one last story from her past to tell: that of his Great Uncle Yakov, who helped her survive the Nazis. It’s a story of vampires and werewolves he can scarcely believe—and in the wake of his Great Grandmother’s death, Yani realizes the story is far from over.

The world of vampires and werewolves isn’t a safe place for a human, even one with Yani’s unusual family history. With danger at his door, the smart thing would be to run, but much like his Great Grandmother Yani has never been very good at running away—especially with his loved ones and the whole world at stake.

Magnified is the first in a new series by Mell Eight and a most unusual series its starting out to be.  A supernatural tale, it has all the typical elements one expects to find such as vampires, werewolves, succubi and more but one of its main characters and an important secondary character are Eastern European Jews, one of whom barely escaped the trains and gas chambers of WWII.  How they did it and their Jewish traditions they carry with them always as part of who they are is a central element to this story and I expect of this series.

I found this whole aspect of the story a wonderful layer not often found in my stories (see Astrid Amara’s Carol of the Bellskis (Bellskis, #1) among others). Not only does Mell Eight use Yani’s contemporary family’s religious celebrations as part of her important need for us to understand how strong this family is and their ties to each other and their faith but later on starts to pull in other threads that deepens the religious element when a mage with links to Kabbalah appears.

We start off the story as Yani’s great grandmother is telling the story of her childhood. Its the 1940’s and the swift move by the Nazis is occurring as they round up Jews and move them to the internments camps and the ovens.  We are propelled into these awful times and a heartrending if sometimes confusing narrative, one that quickly becomes clearer by the page.

The timeline moves along quickly as Yani ages from a young boy to a young man of college age.  The jumps in time are handled easily and are necessary to get to the action required by the meat of the story.

That’s the introduction of the world of vampires, werewolves etc to our young student.  Its an explosive one and one that was my only main issue here.  I would have expected a much larger reaction from Yani.  His reaction felt almost anti-climatic after all he went through. And it continued to bother me throughout the rest of the story.

There is a lot that the author is packing in here.  There are two main couples that are intended to flow into the next story and carry on the series.  It was almost too much for this book to handle.  We really didn’t get a background on the secondary couple, perhaps that’s coming in the next book.  But they had such an important part to play here that they came off less substantial without that background.

There is a very scary villain here, a true monster. One I can’t wait to see taken down.  I wonder how many books its going to take?  I will be there for every one.

Mell Eight packed a lot into this first story.  Religion, family, romance, mystery, horror…its a writer’s cornucopia and it almost exploded the seams of the story on element overload.  So much here to absorb that it got confusing at times. But in the end, Mell Eight pulled it off…sort of as there is a HFN ending.   I recommend this unusual story, its quite a ride even though I’m not quite sure where we’re going yet.

Cover by Aisha Akeju‘s cover contains relevant objects to the story.  I’m just not a fan of these simplified covers, just they don’t draw me in.

Sales Links   – Pre Order (others will follow)

Less Than Three Press

Book Details:

ebook
Expected publication: September 7th 2016 by Less Than Three Press
ISBN13 9781620048535
Edition Language English