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Archive for February 27th, 2017

Apocalypse All the Time

Posted in 4 Star Books on February 27, 2017| 2 Comments »

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Apocalypse All the Time by David Atkinson

Doesn’t it seem as if someone issues a new apocalypse prediction every week? Y2K? The Mayan apocalypse? The Rapture? Doesn’t it seem endless? As opposed to the traditional trend of post-apocalyptic literature, Apocalypse All the Time is post-post-apocalypticism.

Marshall is sick of the apocalypse happening on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Life is constantly in peril, continually disrupted, but nothing significant ever happens. The emergency is always handled. Always. Marshall wants out; he wants it all to stop…one way or another. Apocalypse All the Time explores humanity’s fascination with the end times and what impact such a fascination has on the way we live our lives.

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Author’s Bio

David S. Atkinson is the author of “Apocalypse All the Time,” “Not Quite so Stories” (2016 Best Book Awards Finalist Fiction: Short Story), “The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes” (2015 National Indie Excellence Awards finalist in humor), and “Bones Buried in the Dirt” (2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist, First Novel <80K). He is a Staff Reader for Digging Through The Fat and his writing appears in “Bartleby Snopes,” “Literary Orphans,” “Atticus Review,” and others.

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My Review

4 stars

Marshall is sick and tired of apocalypses. It seems there is at least one every week. He just wants to go to the assembly line and do his job. During another apocalypse, Marshall decides to go shopping and meets Bonnie. She is tired of the apocalypses too. They start with a picnic during a zombie apocalypse and then find themselves “married” while being sent in space to another planet when the Earth is going to be destroyed by the sun.

But then enough is enough. Bonnie decides to mess with people with Marshall’s help during another apocalypse when everyone is stuck underground but she ends up saving everyone by giving them diarrhea. The lizard costumes didn’t work and neither did telling people that the apocalypse really isn’t happening. Bonnie finally decides that she has to kill humanity just to escape the apocalypse rut they were all stuck in.

I love apocalyptic and dystopian stories and could resist when I was asked to review Apocalypse All the Time. This is a hilarious look into those that live in the different apocalypses. I can see myself in Marshall’s place where once a week or more there was and Earth stopping event. All the poor man wants is some kind of normalcy. But you have floods, then fires, then freezes, then earthquakes, and it is never ending. And just when another one hits the Apocalypse Amelioration Agency cleans it up just to create or discovery another one. I don’t really blame Bonnie for trying to end humanity.

This is a great satirical look at the deluge of apocalyptic stories out in the market. If you are looking for a great laugh, you need to check out Apocalypse All the Time.

I received Apocalypse All the Time from Sami at Roger Charlie for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

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The Rising

Posted in 4 Star Books on February 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

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The Rising by Heather Graham and Jon Land

From acclaimed thriller-suspense novelists Heather Graham and Jon Land comes a story of action, mystery, and the endurance of young love.

Twenty-four hours. That’s all it takes for the lives of two young people to be changed forever.

Alex Chin has the world on a plate. A football hero and homecoming king with plenty of scholarship offers, his future looks bright. His tutor, Samantha Dixon, is preparing to graduate high school at the top of her class. She plans to turn her NASA internship into a career. When a football accident lands Alex in the hospital, his world is turned upside down. His doctor is murdered. Then, his parents. Death seems to follow him wherever he goes, and now it’s after him.

Alex flees. He tells Samantha not to follow, but she became involved the moment she walked through his door and found Mr. and Mrs. Chin as they lay dying in their home. She cannot abandon the young man she loves. The two race desperately to stay ahead of Alex’s attackers long enough to figure out why they are hunting him in the first place. The answer lies with a secret buried deep in his past, a secret his parents died to protect. Alex always knew he was adopted, but he never knew the real reason his birth parents abandoned him. He never knew where he truly came from. Until now.

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Author’s Bios

Heather Graham

HEATHER GRAHAM is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. She has written over one hundred novels and novellas and has been honored with awards from Walden Books, B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, RT Book Reviews, and more. Visit her online at theoriginalheathergraham.com.

Jon Land

JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of thirty-eight novels, including the bestselling series featuring female Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. He is also the co-author of the nonfiction bestseller Betrayal. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island and can be found on the web at jonlandbooks.com.

Heather Graham’s Website     Jon Land’s Website

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 My Review

4 stars

Alex Chin is the high school quarter back star. After a particularly rough tackle, he spends the night in the hospital. There the doctor makes a strange discovery about something in his brain. Samantha is Alex’s tutor. Sadly she discovers Alex’s parent’s murdered in their home. She meets Alex and they both go on the run after they discovery robots are who killed Alex’s parents. It seems there is much more to Alex then just being adopted by the Chin’s. There is a hunt for him and a race to stay alive and try to find someone that can explain what is happening.

I love Heather Graham’s stories so I was over the moon for the chance to review The Rising. It was easy to get into the story as you feel for Sam. Her parents are hippies and growing medical marijuana. She has dreams of working for NASA but no money to get there. She also has a crush on Alex.

Alex is a great kid, nice, respectful, and has some loving parents. He is the adopted child of Chinese immigrants and although strange, he loves his parents deeply. But after the CT scan and discovering his doctor murdered, Alex knows he has to go on the run. His origins are a great twist that I didn’t see coming.

I really liked how everything came into play and how the ending was left open for a possible sequel. I did listen to this on audiobook and really enjoyed listening to Luke Daniels. He did a great job narrating and drawing me further into the story.

This is a great young adult thriller. I strongly recommend checking it out.

I received The Rising from the publisher for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

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Prison of Statues

Posted in Uncategorized on February 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

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Book Title:   Prison of Statues  (Book 1 of The Statues Trilogy) by Ainsley Shay

Genre(s): YA Paranormal Romance

Everything appears colorless in Iris’ world…until she falls asleep and the nightmares begin.

Iris’ plan to stay in her small town of Gradywoods just long enough to bury her father shatters when she finds a letter he wrote to her only two days before his death. On the evening of his funeral, her nightmare bursts with colors. Being colorblind since birth, Iris feels both amazed and apprehensive, but when she wakes in the morning, her world turns gray once again.

The day after her father’s funeral, Iris finds refuge from her pain at Yves Antique Pages, the small bookshop owned by Mr. Yves, her adopted grandfather. She soon encounters three mysterious strangers who are inexplicably drawn to her. Through secrets and deceit, she fears they are all here for one reason…her.

Night after night, the nightmares continue into a series of disturbing events where Iris finds herself caught in a vibrant collision of past and present. In them, she witnesses another’s loss, torture, and broken love. As each episode escalates, she’s brought closer to a place where death may be a more satisfying end.

As Iris’ world reaches fragile limits, she must find a way out of an uncompromising fight for her life and for a love she may once have had.

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Ainsley Shay

Author’s Bio

Ainsley Shay’s passion for writing sparks from her unstoppable brain conjuring random first sentences, a single trait of a character, or a single thread of a plot. But, when her love for the fantastical world of fiction, where anything can happen takes over, it’s exactly at that moment she is reminded that the possibilities are endless. And, there is where the fun begins.

She surrounds herself with positive people and strives for balance in everything (rarely finds it, but she’ll never give up looking for it!). She sleeps with rocks and dreams in her pillowcase, loves audio books, has more jeans with holes than without, is fascinated with the word “hence”, and has a beta fish named Enzo, who excitedly meets her at his window each morning.
Ainsley resides in South Florida with her incredible husband and three amazing daughters. She loves the beach, but like most Floridians takes that beautiful part of our state for granted. (She’s working on that!)

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Other Works by Ainsley Shay:

Adelina’s Curse (Book 2 of The Statues Trilogy)

The Carving Witch (Book 3 of The Statues Trilogy)

After the Curtain Falls

Delicate Thorns

Catching Bait

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Excerpt

The front door opened. I reached across the passenger seat and rolled down the window. He was not quite silhouetted as light bathed him from behind. I could easily see the details of his shirtless, firm body. My dream hardly gave justice to the real thing. He stood on the porch with the phone still held to his ear. “Do you want to come in?”

“Yes.” This was not a good idea. I meant, it was a great idea, the best idea I ever had. But, it was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. I got out of my car to go to him. Blacwin waited for me on the porch. It wasn’t until I heard him breathe as I climbed the few steps of the porch that I realized we both still held the phones against our ears. He whispered, “Hi,” into the receiver.

“Hi.” His bare chest was a distraction, as was the line that led from his chest all the way down to the waistline of his jeans.

“I guess we don’t need these anymore.”

Agreeing, I lowered the phone. We smiled sheepishly at each other. Bad idea, Iris. This is how things that probably shouldn’t happen, happen. But, right now, I really wanted those things to happen.

“I hope this isn’t too creepy, me showing up on your doorstep at four-thirty in the morning.”

“Creepier things have happened.” His smile touched his eyes, and simultaneously, every other part of me, too. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive than in those countless seconds of staring into his eyes. It was like he knew every secret, every moment that had ever happened in my life. He pushed open the door and gestured for me to enter. I did. As I passed him, I caught a glimpse of the pendant resting in the hollow of his throat. Unconsciously, I took a sharp intake of breath. It was exactly the one from my dream. I shook my head and tried to conjure some rational explanation. I had to have glimpsed it before and tucked the image into the layers of my subconscious. No, I haven’t. I felt positive I had never seen it.

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