Review: Kindred by J.A. Redmerski

Kindred
Author: J.A. Redmerski
Release Date: July 20, 2012
Publisher: Self Published
The Darkwoods Trilogy Book #2
ISBN13: 9781478244394
Genre: Young Adult/Paranormal
Review Copy Source: Author

Isaac Mayfair is hiding a dark secret. And just when Adria Dawson thinks the worst of her life among the werewolf world is over, she learns the secret that can rip her and Isaac’s love apart. Adria must come to terms with what the truth means for her. What it means for her life and how much time she has left to live it. She must choose between two different fates, neither of which can offer life as a certainty.

As if Isaac’s betrayal isn’t enough, Adria learns that there are things out there older and more powerful than werewolves could ever be. An archaic entity known only to few as the Praverian, unlike anything Adria has ever known or heard of.

As Adria struggles with her own fateful dilemmas, she must also try to find out why the Praverian is so interested in her and do everything in her power to stay out of its way.

Due to adult content, this book is recommended for 17+

Redmerski does it again. Ive really enjoyed this series and I have no want to put the books down once I start reading. KINDRED picks up 3 months after the ending of THE MAYFAIR MOON. Adria start remembering things that happened during her kidnapping and starts having dizzy/blackout spells and is starting to put pieced together. 

Adria and Isaac are still very much in love and getting closer but are both terrified to come clean with each other about what they know is going on with Adria's health.  Unfortunately when the truth is revealed it doesn't go well. There is a lot of hurt and separation between the two. The secondary characters play a big role in this series. Adria's best friend is revealed to have a much bigger role in Adria's life then anyone really imagined. All of Isaac's family members are always in the background lending their support. There is plenty of action in KINDRED and the pacing is nice and steady throughout. There is also some great closure for Adria having to do with her mother. The ending is pretty huge and I'm dying to know what will happen next.

The Darkwoods Trilogy is worth reading!!

I gave it 4/5 stars

Winner: Jennifer Turner Giveaway

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Review: Cold Fury by T.M. Goeglein

Cold Fury
Author: T.M. Goeglein
Release Date: July 24, 2012
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Cold Fury Book #1
ISBN:  0399257209
ISBN13: 9780399257209
Genre: Young Adult
Review Copy Source: Librarything Early Reviewers

Jason Bourne meets The Sopranos in this breathtaking adventure

Sara Jane Rispoli is a normal sixteen-year-old coping with school and a budding romance--until her parents and brother are kidnapped and she discovers her family is deeply embedded in the Chicago Outfit (aka the mob).

Now on the run from a masked assassin, rogue cops and her turncoat uncle, Sara Jane is chased and attacked at every turn, fighting back with cold fury as she searches for her family. It's a quest that takes her through concealed doors and forgotten speakeasies--a city hiding in plain sight. Though armed with a .45 and 96K in cash, an old tattered notebook might be her best defense--hidden in its pages the secret to "ultimate power." It's why she's being pursued, why her family was taken, and could be the key to saving all of their lives.

Action packed, with fresh, cinematic writing, Cold Fury is a riveting and imaginative adventure readers will devour.

COLD FURY was interesting.. It was definitely more mob-ish then paranormal. There is a fair amount of action but most of the book is set around Sara trying to figure out who her family really is and where her family has disappeared to. The pacing wasn't as fast as I would have liked and I was a bit bored because of that at times but the mystery and investigative work Sara went through was neat. There is constant questioning on Sara's part, we get answers and there is a lot revealed. The setting was great as I'm from Chicago so it is always neat to read a book and recognize places that are described and it would be pretty awesome if there were really hidden places like in the book. There was some neat secondary characters but I didn't understand some of their overall role's in the story. 

I finished COLD FURY and enjoyed most of it but don't have any want to follow the series when the next book comes out.

I gave it 2.5/5 stars 

Guest Post & Giveaway: Mishap & Retribution by M.M. Shelley

UFI welcomes M.M. Shelley Author of Mishap and Retribution. Thanks for Joining us!!

HI Everyone, I’m M.M. Shelley and I would like to thank UFI for having me as a guest today as I share with you my book; Mishap and Retribution.

 So please pour yourself a cup of your favorite Latte and if you’re at work, hang up your “On Break” shingle as we take five.

         

          Many have asked why the islands of Hawaii are the setting for my fantasy adventure and my response has always been, why not? It’s the perfect place. I was fortunate to spend some time on the islands, and even more that I have made really great friends who have invited me back to stay with them. The people of Hawaii love stories; their culture is filled with some really good ones. Some of them are based on the Hawaiian goddess, Pele.

          Pele plays a major part in Mishap & Retribution; after all it does take place on her islands, so how could I not include her?  A quick note about Pele; she wasn’t actually born on the islands, in the stories told of her she traveled from another Polynesian Island and made them her home.

          As a goddess Pele has had many loves and some of them with mortal men. Sometimes a child or two follow, as the grandmother to cousins Kye and Kana’i, she can be very protective and sometimes over bearing.

Here are a few things you should know about Pele:

*She is the ruler of the Hawaiian Islands

*Fire is her main power; she controls volcanoes and its lava.

*She works everyday to maintain control of the islands over the other gods and goddess and is constantly at war.

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M.M. Shelley is a storyteller, word smith and dreamer. MISHAP AND MAYHEM, a captivating story of faerie's and magic, is her debut novel. She has traveled the world extensively in search of the magic which is often overlooked in every day life. M.M. Shelley is a native of southern California, and a student of mythology from which she gets much inspiration.

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Find M.M. Shelley and her books

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Mishap & Retribution 

 At the Dawn of Time a curse against Man was made and only Death will satisfy it.

The year is 2045 and twins Grasiella and Tatiana who are Cinerian, Fae and Human must choose a side and may find themselves on different sides of an ancient war.

With Tatiana trapped in the Fae realm and learning what life has been like, she has found herself bonding with the Fae. Grasiella seeking the whereabouts of her twin has come to a crossroads of her own.

Separated and neither knowing the fate of the other, each make their way to an uncertain future.

Death has swept across the Hawaiian Islands and the cost of peace may be too high.

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Giveaway: A Wolf at the Door by K.A. Stewart

**Available from ROC Fantasy Aug 7, 2012**

A Wolf at the Door
Author: K.A. Stewart
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Publisher: Roc
Jesse James Dawson Book #3
ISBN:  045146463X
ISBN13: 9780451464637
Genre: Urban Fantasy

STAR STRUCK

Jesse James Dawson was once an ordinary man until he discovered that demons were real, and fighting them meant putting his own soul on the line. His new case is a beauty: Gretchen Keene, a Hollywood starlet who’s become an unwitting catalyst in an all-out demon war. It’s not her soul Jesse needs to protect, but the two-hundred-and-seventy-six others she’s carting around—all the souls sold to spend just one night with the blonde bombshell. That’s a lot of baggage, although it might explain her meteoric rise to fame. And it’s all up for grabs by the demon world.

All Jesse has to do is keep her safe until New Years. Sounds easy. But darkness is casting a nasty shadow in the California sun—a new unseen enemy is closing in and leaving Jesse to wonder, how do you fight something you can’t see coming?

US ONLY

 

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New Releases: 7/22-7/28

Tues July 24

Cold Fury by T.M. Goeglein
The Covert Wolf by Bonnie Vanak
Dragon Justice (Paranormal Scene Investigations #4) by Laura Anne Gilman
Drain You by M. Beth Bloom
Endlessly (Paranormalcy, #3) by Kiersten White
Seduced by Blood (Sweetblood, #4) by Laurie London
Sentinels: Tiger Bound by Doranna Durgin
Something Strange and Deadly (Something Strange and Deadly, #1) by Susan Dennard
Thirteen (Women of the Otherworld, #13) by Kelley Armstrong

 

Happy Reading!!

Guest Post: Her Loving Husband's Curse by Meredith Allard

UFI welcomes Meredith Allard Author of the Loving Husband series. Thanks for Joining us!!

Thank you for letting me drop by, UFI!

It was a surprise to me when I came up with an idea for a vampire trilogy, especially since I wasn’t that into the paranormal/urban fantasy genre. As I began my journey into the vampire world, having decided to see if there was any meat to this crazy idea of mine about a vampire’s love for his long-dead wife, I noticed that some readers are very particular about how they like their vampires. I’ve seen more than one criticism that vampires these days are too soft. Vampires are bloodthirsty, angry, violent creatures of the night, they say. That’s what vampires have always been, and that’s what they always should be. Fair enough, since we all have our likes and dislikes about what we like to read.

I realized that I had an important decision to make as I was writing both Her Dear & Loving Husband and the second book in the trilogy, Her Loving Husband’s Curse. How violent were my vampires going to be? The main reason I had never been into the vampire genre was because I’m not a fan of violence in any way, shape, or form. I can’t even watch The Real Housewives because their heated arguments are too much for me. I’m not a wimp (well, maybe a bit), but it’s not entertaining to me to see people or animals being hurt. As I was deciding how brutal my vampires would be in their search for blood to drink, I had to consider what violence means to me.

I’m not fascinated by violence. To me, violence is the lowest common denominator. When we’re angry we want to lash out, physically or verbally, whether it’s with loved ones, the barista at Starbucks, at that guy in the gray BMW who cut us off in traffic. To me, giving into violence is weakness because it means I’m letting outside circumstances control my emotions and my behavior. And it seems, as I get older, that it’s becoming more accepted to be mean and rude and angry and violent.

Rising above that violence to be calm and rational, even kind, is an amazing thing, especially since it’s so easy to give into the anger. It takes an extra thought process, an extra determination, to overcome the fury. Now I was onto something. Overcoming our baser instincts to be better than we are. That fascinates me. And that’s the journey we’re all on—struggling to be better today than we were yesterday.

That is also the journey that James Wentworth, the vampire protagonist in Her Dear & Loving Husband and Her Loving Husband’s Curse, is on—being better than he was. Is he violent? He can be. But he’s working toward being more human than some humans. His motto is “Live and let live.” It’s a motto I try to live by as well.

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Meredith Allard is the Executive Editor of The Copperfield Review,  an award-winning literary journal for readers and writers of historical fiction. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from California State University, Northridge. She has taught writing to students aged 10 to 60, and she has taught creative writing and writing historical fiction workshops at Learning Tree University, UNLV, and the Las Vegas Writers Conference. Her writing has appeared in journals such as The Paumanok Review,  Moondance, Wild Mind,Muse Apprentice Guild, The Maxwell Digest, CarbLite, Writer’s Weekly, and ViewsHound. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Find Meredith and her books

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Her Loving Husband's Curse
Loving Husband #2

 How far will you go to protect the one you love?

Finally, after many long and lonely years, James Wentworth’s life is falling into place. Together with his wife, Sarah, the only woman he has ever loved, he has found the meaning behind her nightmares about the Salem Witch Trials, and now they are rebuilding the life they began together so long ago.

But the past is never far behind for the Wentworths. While Sarah is haunted by new visions, now about the baby she carried over three hundred years before, James is confronted with painful memories from his time with the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. Through it all, the persistent reporter Kenneth Hempel reappears, still determined to prove that the undead walk the earth. If Hempel succeeds in his quest, James and Sarah will suffer. Will the curse of the vampire prevent James and Sarah from living their happily ever after?

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