Review: Eye of the Beholder (Winterfield series) by Edward Kendrick

Review: 3.5 stars

Preston Davison and his friend Cary Fielding were friends in high school and then their lives took two wildly different paths. Cary went off to college and Preston went on to become ‘The Sergeant’, a minor star in gay pornographic movies. The two kept in touch and it was Cary who finally gave Preston the push to leave the adult film company he was working for and try to start over. But on the very night Preston quits his job, he is brutally attacked and his face destroyed by an unknown assailant. Now afraid to go outside with his “monster” of a face, Preston lives with his friend the nurse who treated him and starts working on his own web design company, secure in the fact he will never have to meet any clients face to face. But one of his new clients has a very familiar name and soon Preston is writing to his old friend under a pen name.

Cary lives with his boyfriend, Hugh, and has tried to move on with his life after failing to find his friend after the attack. But memories of Preston won’t go away. Then one day, Cary’s firm decides it needs a new website. The designer Cary chooses only conducts their meetings online and corresponds only with email. But something about the way this person “talks” feels so familiar to Cary….

Can Preston overcome his fears and tell Cary who he is? Unbeknownst to Cary and Preston, the person who ruined Pres’ face is still around and waiting for his chance to strike once more. What will win out? Fear or love? Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder?

I really liked this story and wavered in assigning a rating. The true strength of this story is the character of Preston Davison, the ex porn star disfigured by a gruesome attack. The attack happens “off stage” so we jump immediately to the aftermath and it’s devastating effect upon Preston and his life. We are there as Preston grapples with the remnants of a face that once was beautiful and the lack of a career to land on. I actually wished there was more of this section of the story. What Kendrick gives us as Pres starts to pull whats left of his life together is so realistic, so heart wrenching, especially a scene in a part with a little boy, that I wanted more of his recovery. And I wanted the payoff promised by the interaction with the young boy (more about this later). Pres is helped by his “Tabby Cat”, the nurse who cared for him in the hospital and became his friend. I loved that character too. Tabitha is a lovely creation, and I really enjoyed every part of her friendship with Preston. This part of the story is a solid 4 star rating.

It’s when we turn to the other characters and elements of the story that the rating starts to waver downward. Cary is a less substantial figure here with respect to Preston. Cary’s present relationship is not fulfilling but he stays in it more out of habit than anything else. I could wish for a more forceful or lively presence here but Cary comes across as just too passive a character for this to work as well as the author had hoped. The other part of the story that didn’t work as well for me was that the attacker was easily identifiable early on in the story. And although this didn’t really bother me, the resolution at the end came far too easily for everyone concerned. No big denouement, no great dramatic”aha”, so it didn’t ring true considering the heinous nature of the attacks on Preston. Given the strength of the first part of this story, the last half just sort of petered out.

I did notice that this story seems to be the beginning of a series titled Winterfield which is the town they all live in so I am hoping that the boy and his brother will figure in one of the books to come. Really, that was such a tantalizing scene and its promise has stayed with me all through the rest of the story as I kept hoping the boy would make a reappearance. So I am still going to recommend this book with reservations. Forget about the suspense tag and look at it as more of a romance. I am hoping the stories that come will fill in the narrative I feel is lacking here. Let me know what you think? I look forward to hearing from you.

Cover by Reese Dante is nice but really doesn’t speak to the story.

Review: Pack Business (Pine Hollow Wolves #2) by Caitlin Ricci

Rating: 3.75 stars

Shifter Liam, human Travis and his daughter Hannah are still trying to settle into the new living arrangement as one happy family. Liam adores Hannah and is quickly falling in love with Travis, the man he rescued from living on the streets, along with his daughter. Travis too finds himself falling for the shifter with the icy blue eyes who protects them both so lovingly and is paying for him to attend university. But trouble is brewing from within Liam’s back and Hannah, the 2 year old human is the focus of all the discord.

Hannah can see all the shifters in their true form and calls them all “puppies” because that is what she sees when she looks at them. And that can be a problem when you are trying to hide from the human society you live in. Plus there is that all bogeyman tale of human Hunters that could see the shifters in their human form and know they were wolves. The pack is not ready to find out whether it is truth or fairy tale, they just want the little girl dealt with. Can their new family succeed and thrive when all around them want the family broken apart and the child to disappear?

Pack Business is a continuation of the Pine Hollow Wolves series started with Almost Paradise. The story begins 6 months after the end of Almost Paradise. Liam, Travis, and Hannah are living together in Liam’s house with his two Mastiffs, Lucy and Ethel. They are really starting to feel as though they are a family, and adorable Hannah is the child that Liam never thought he would have as a gay man and shifter. Travis has started back at school, and everyone is happy, mostly.

Ricci’s wonderful characters that drew me in to start with are all back and flourishing. I fell in love with Liam, Travis and Hannah immediately and became invested in their future so I was very excited to see where the story is going. Liam’s pack is an interesting one where the Alpha is almost two wolves, powerful twin brother and sister who also happen to be African American, a rarity within the shifter universe. Samson and Evangeline are two strong characters that you want more of, including their backstory, especially Evangeline. I love Evangeline. She is strong, charismatic and independent and her brother, the Alpha, loves her and depends on her judgement and strength. Less is known about her brother but I believe that is intentional. At least I hope so because i can see glimpses of Samson that just cry out for his own story.

Pack Business also starts to address the fact that Hannah can “see” the true wolf form of every shifter she meets when they are in their human shape. How do you explain to other people when a 2 year old continues to call you “puppy”? Staying hidden is to be achieved at all costs and to some that cost is Hannah’s life. Additionally, Ricci introduces a shifter legend or their own version of a Grimm fairy tale in which long ago there was a group of humans called Hunters who possessed the ability to identify a shifter on sight. These Hunters used their ability to kill every shifter they found. But as the author tells it, not even the shifters are sure if this is fact or fiction. With each new element, Ricci ups the anxiety and uncertainty about Liam and Travis’s ability to keep Hannah safe and happy.

I really love this series but recognize that there are several aspects that will not set well with other readers. One is the fact that if you have not read the first book in the series, not much of this story will make sense, In fact , Pack Business has more the feel of a really long chapter than a separate book on its own. To be a satisfying read that deserves a four star rating, this book should be folded in right after Almost Paradise, and read together. Then it makes sense and becomes an even more compelling read.

Another is that the wolf shifters here are of the I Dream of Jeannie school of shifters. Blink, they are human, blink and they are wolves sort of thing. I will admit to a certain niggling little sarcastic voice in the back of my head that goes “Really? And their clothes reassemble too?” I like this story enough to kind of overlook this but I will admit to preferring the more sensible bone jarring, skin stretching, more realistic form of shifting. It just is more agreeable to the naturalist in me.

I find the Pine Hollow Wolves series to be so captivating, so full of promising glimpses into future stories, that I am willing to shove my quibbles with the books into the background. I want to see what happens with Hannah and her gift/curse. Are Hunters in fact, real? And is Hannah is a Hunter, what will happen when a Hunter is raised by a wolf pack? This element just cries out for a YA book, don’t you think? With Hannah as the heroine? And there is Liam ready to leave the pack and his financial security for Travis and Hannah. And Evangeline, with her divided loyalties? I can go on and hope that Caitlin Ricci does so as well, while answering all the questions that keep popping into my mind.

This is a short book, only 110 pages and it cries out for a much longer length. But I will take a sequel no matter how long or short it may be. I am now fully invested in these characters and their future. I need to know what happens to them and that is wonderful story telling.

Lee Tiffin is the cover artist and this cover is just as adorable as the family pictured. It works both as a cover for this book and to brand the series.

Books in the Pine Hollow Wolves series in the order they were written and should be read, one immediately after the other:

Almost Paradise (Pine Hollow Wolves #1)

Pack Business (Pine Hollow Wolves #2)

A Troubled Range (Range series #2) by Andrew Grey

Rating: 4.5 stars

Haven Jessup has never understood the hatred between his father, Kent Jessup and Jefferson Holden who owns the ranch next to theirs. The feud between the two men has been there all his life, but his father’s hatred for the Holdens has never been his. One day as Haven is out checking his fences, a huge storm comes up and Dakota Holden is there to save his life and take him home to the Holden ranch to dry off. Once there, Haven meets Dakota’s partner Wally and Phillip Reardon, a friend of Dakota’s in for a visit. Haven is afraid to admit even to himself that he likes men, he knows what his father’s reaction would be but inside the Holden ranch, Haven sees men in love with each other and not afraid to show it and for the first time, Haven starts to question the manner in which he lives his life.

Phillip Reardon has come to see his friends after being fired from his job in the city. Phillip has never wanted to settle down romantically before but as he watches Dakota and Wally interact, he realizes that he wants that type of relationship for himself but where to find the man to spend the rest of his life with? Phillip recognizes the inner turmoil he sees inside the shy, young rancher and works to help Haven accept himself. As both men move forward into a new and hidden relationship, trouble arrives on the Holden ranch in terms of cut fences, rustled cattle, as somewhere someone with a secret agenda is threatening the Holden ranch and the safety of all who live on it. How can a new relationship withstand the strain and stress of all the recent events and the knowledge that one day soon Phillip is going to leave to return to the city and Haven will be on his own once more?

The Range series continues to be a favorite series of mine by Andrew Grey, author of a number of wonderful series on a variety of subjects. A Troubled Range continues the story started in A Shared Range, that of the men of the Holden ranch from father Jefferson Holden and his son, Dakota to the men who arrive there and find their little heaven on earth. A Troubled Range brings the neighboring Jessup ranch into the story, as part of that family has been engaged with a feud with Jefferson Holden for most of their lives. Neither man will reveal the cause of the hatred they bear for each other to their sons but it impacts all around them.

The two families could not be more different, especially when it comes to the treatment of their sons. Jefferson Holden loves his son and accepts his son’s homosexuality with ease, welcoming his son’s partner into the family without hesitation. Haven, on the other hand, cannot remember if his father has ever held him or told him that he loves him. In fact, Haven has been treated more like a farm worker by his father than a son all of his life. Andrew Grey is terrific at exposing a family’s discord and its effects upon the innocents caught in its path. Kent Jessup is a hard man who has retreated from the physical work needed to be done while still managing to punish and hound his son about his disappointments in Haven on every aspect of his being. We feel for Haven immediately as he continues to do his best for the ranch he loves,and deal with his abusive father. Then you add onto that emotional load the fact that Haven is gay and conflicted about his sexuality, and your heart goes out to the boy who doesn’t break but find the courage to reach out for more in life.

Phillip Reardon is the exact opposite of Haven. He is a self assured city boy who has never settled down with one man nor had the desire to do so. Then the loss of his job shakes up his complacency and makes him take a hard look at the lonely future ahead of him if he doesn’t change his ways. Phillip likes Haven and is attracted to the young man with all the problems. At first, Phillip just wants to help Haven as a friend as Haven works to accept his sexuality and then attraction deepens into something more. But Phillip has to sort out his own internal baggage before he can make room for another in his heart. Grey makes sure that all his characters reflect on their true natures and we get to watch as they sort themselves out. It’s realistic, it’s emotional and it brings us so much closer to these wonderful characters and makes us understand who they really are. Andrew Grey knows how to deepen our connections to his characters and their stories and does so with a maestro’s touch.

A Troubled Range brings us storms on the prairie, heartbreaking moments of both pain and joy and ending with the deep satisifaction of two men finding true love at the end of the road. As the characters are drawn from life, we see betrayal and loss that cuts to the core amidst the dynamics of two opposing western families. What an amazing series that can bring together so many intense conflations, of battlefields both internal and physical and still manage to make them all fresh in each book of the series. Don’t pass any of these books by.

Cover art by Catt Ford, who continues to do a wonderful job with branding the series.

Here are the series in the order they were written and should be read:

A Shared Range (Range, #1)

A Troubled Range (Range, #2)

An Unsettled Range (Range, #3)

A Foreign Range (Range, #4)

An Isolated Range (Range, #5)

A Volatile Range (Range, #6) comes out next week, February 5th, 2013

Great Saturday, Marvelous Sunday, Fall is Here! The Week Ahead in Reviews

I had a great day yesterday. Friends came over, a fellow blogger, and an author, both wonderful. We had a time of it, discussing books, movies, Spartacus, you name it while drinking wine, gobbling up bread, cheese and crackers while the sun shown down! Does it get any better than that? I don’t think so. Kirby loves visitors and was so excited to see them both, going from one to the other before roaming around looking for squirrels and bugs and things. Winston and Willow are just happy to sit in the chair with me and chill. And today? Just beautiful, cool, sunny, the perfect football weather as they say. Daughter and SIL off to the Redskins game and RGIII’s first home game. I know, I know. I swore off the Redskins but habits are hard to break! So consider this a work in progress.

Three more bushes to go into the garden, Firelight Spirea. The foliage changes color three times during the year. In the spring, the leaves are a orange green changing to greenish yellow in the summer and then turning a lovely deep red in the fall, all that and beautiful pink blossoms that beacon to bees and butterflies for weeks while they are in bloom. Sigh! I love gardening and the discovery of new plants. The windows are open, letting in the cool breezes to refresh the house air. A ruby throated hummer just buzzed the window letting me know the feeders still need filling as there are still migrants making their way south and they shouldn’t be forgotten.

I am just finishing up the first in the Wolf’s Own series by Carole Cummings and loving it. Look for the review at the end of the week. I am starting the week off with a bang and a great book by Amy Lane. Don’t miss out on this one. As always so many books, so little time, but I am working on it. Just a reminder, the first week in October is JL Langley week and I will be giving away a copy of My Regelence Rake to a lucky person who comments on the week which will include a interview with JL and recaps of all the SciFi Regency books to date. So let’s get to it:

Monday: Sidecar by Amy Lane

Tuesday: Magic’s Muse by Anne Barwell

Wednesday: Gilbert by Bailey Bradford

Thursday: Wolf’s Own: Ghost by Carole Cummings

Friday: Inferno by Scarlett Blackwell

Saturday: Second Hand by Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton

Have a wonderful week. Get out and enjoy this weather! Happy Fall All!

Review of Gambling Men the Novel by Amy Lane

Rating: 4 stars

Quentin Jackson and Jason Spade have been best friends since their freshman days in college. Where Jason leads, Quentin has followed. Dorm to apartment, college into business, year after year, the path ahead for one is the path for both. Orphaned at an early age, Jason grew up with his uncle and his partner as role models and the game poker as his bible. Need a rule to live by? Poker has the answers, at least for Jason. For Quint? Not so much. An out bisexual, Jason spent his years in and out of bed after bed, regardless of their gender. Quint, on the other hand, followed his families strictures, and dated women and watched his friend avoid relationships and commitments at all costs. Jace has been aggressive in his approach to life, his “shark like” mannerisms making him sucessful, but at a price. Quentin has always come behind Jace smoothing the ruffled feathers and feelings of those that came into contact with Jace and his methodology. But eight years later, all that changes in one daring moment when Jace makes a sexual move on his friend that results in a night of passion.

For years, Jace has waited until the odds of success were in his favor to make a romantic play for Quent. When Jace is rewarded with a night of unsurpassed passion, both men must come to grips with a long unstated love now out in the open. For Jace, he needs to learn that all of life is not a poker game. For Quentin, he needs to trust that Jace can learn that winning at all costs will not help them build a relationship that will last. To call or fold before a relationship is even started? That’s the question both men must answer before they can find their HEA.

In Gambling Men by Amy Lane, the author uses the game of Poker as a format for her story of two friends fumbling their ways to love and happiness. As someone only minutely familiar with the game, I found using different Poker hands and actions fun if not occasionally confusing. Jace is convinced that all life is a Poker game to be won, a belief he picked up in adolescence living with his uncle and partner. Amy Lane does her usual great job at characterization by helping us understand Jace’s somewhat juvenile application of a Poker’s rules approach to life’s hardships and hurdles. Equally open is Quentin’s background in cementing his ideals and more passive life style. Winning versus nurture. Or in these case, a winning nature supported by a nurturing one.

Lane really understands relationship dynamics so the story really engaged me when Jace had to learn to adjust his life and its expectation to include Quentin in a role he had never occupied before. Up until then, Jace was still a little too shallow for me if still understandable. It was so appealing to watch each man flounder in turn, as they danced around dating, outing their relationship to their friends and employees, and then finally taking the steps to deepen their commitment to each other by moving in and finally emotionally moving on into the future they both want and deserve. Surrounding these relationship gyrations are a circle of friends as unique and indelible as Jace and Quent themselves. I loved their Poker playing group, their real family, as Quent’s family disowns him after he comes out. I wish I had been given more of these men, so compelling were the glimpses into their lives the author gave us.

Do I have a quibble with the story? Yes, I do, two in fact. One, the Poker game analogy got a tad stale for me after a while. I am not a Poker enthusiast, so Flushes, Draws, etc. became overdone not only as a format for the chapters but as it was used throughout the story even with Jace’s “life is Poker” outlook. I am sure that there are many Poker widows/widowers out there that feel much the same. The other wee quibble? The title. I have way too much Monty Python in me not to look at it and think “Gambling Men: the Novel?” As opposed to “Gambling Men: The Paragraph”? “Gambling Men: The Comic Book”? “Gambling Men: The Tweet”? The possibilities are endless, at least in my somewhat warped brain. Anyone out there with insight on the title, write me, tweet me, inquiring minds want to know. In the meantime, pick this one up and have a wonderful time as two old friends develop into the lovers they were always meant to be.

Cover: Hysterical. Perfect for the novel. Or should I say Gambling Men: The Novel. Really.

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