This is definitely not a book for me. I just couldn't get into it, sadly. I know there are readers out there who would enjoy this, but for me, there wasn't enough adventure.

I like reading about adventure and struggle. But this book was the opposite, in a good way. I could see it being an enjoyable read, but for me, not so much. I got bored. But I will say this about it... if you want a book that will drag you out of the doldrums of reality and make you sigh with a sense of comfort, then this is for you. 

Stronger Within, is a mellow romance novel following the fantasy-like relationship between the main character, Lori, and a rocker named Jake. Lori is suffering from an injury when she meets Jake. Having this "​fragile heroine" (as Coral McCallum calls her in the book's blurb), plus the caring yet strong male figure makes a knight in shining armor scenario.

I can see this being enjoyed by women fantasizing over the possibility of a man who is strong, empathetic, and trustworthy, but I find the characters too perfect. Thus, I think this book is more of a romantic fantasy. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we need a fantasy to give us some comfort. 

This is something I struggled with when reading this book. The world building was alright, but I draw the line at the character development. I found no motivation in any of the characters to do anything. They just did things, and I saw no motivation behind their actions. Making the characters feel... empty.

For example the scene where Lori first meets Jake (spoiler alert) after she trips on the beach and cant get up, I couldn't tell what Jake's motives were. He honestly creeped me out, how the author introduced him watching Lori from a distance. I was expecting him to try to take advantage of her, that's how creepy his entrance was. If the author introduced the characters' motives, the scene wouldn't have been so unsettling. The whole time I was wondering "why isn't Lori as set off by this guy as I am?"

This book was a confusing read at times, due to the author changing narrator voice fairly regularly throughout each chapter. This is something we authors try to avoid, putting voice changes with chapter breaks or at least section breaks to avoid confusing the reader. Yet, this book has Jake's internal emotions in one paragraph, and then Lori's internal emotions in the next. As soon as you feel settled into the thoughts and actions of one character, you're immediately changed to a different character without warning.

Changes in voice, tense, and case are all big no's in writing unless used with a specific reason. and sadly changes in voice are too common in this book.

The book also had a few instances of tense changes, such as a place where "asked" should have been used, yet the author used "asking," changing the scene from past tense to present tense, and then shifted back again. 

Coral McCallum managed to write a romantic fantasy that did it's job. It was charming, and comforting. it had its flaws, but overall a good escape from reality. 

As soon as Chaselyn Roderick posted on her Facebook that the sequel to 99% Down was available, I immediately downloaded the eBook. Then I kept checking Amazon till the paperback was available, and ordered it as soon as it was on Amazon. Why was I so excited about this book? Because I had high high expectations.

This is a sequel to 99% Down, which was an amazing YA post-apocalyptic thriller. The previous book left a high standard for a sequel, and Chaselyn managed to surpass my expectations.

I was so excited to read this book, and I was not disappointed. 

01% Falling is a mentally draining page-turner, which will leave you wondering "what happens to them next" at the end of each chapter. There's no way to not get invested in at least one of the characters as they struggle to find freedom amidst a dying country.

The characters are some of the most developed I have ever read. 

A common theme I've noticed from her readers -- in reviews or in comments to her posts on Facebook -- to always mention their favorite character. You can't come away from a Chaselyn Roderick book, 01% Falling included, without being deeply attached to at least one of the characters. It's like an unspoken rule. My favorite character is Lilith. 

Lilith has a habit of humming Christmas carols to keep herself from having mental episodes, and she likes to quote from books she's read. Despite her being mentally broken in so many ways, I found her to be a very lovable character. 

Chaselyn gives each character so much backstory, and that backstory is far from filler. She uses the backstories to set tone, and to build tension.

Absolutely spotless. 

I love how 01% Falling is so dark, depressing, and mentally exhausting, while still being enjoyable. 

For example: Asher being falsely sentenced as a murderer, without a trial, just to be tested on, after dealing with a life of constant abuse from his father. Then Asher meets Lilith who has to endure her psychotic older sister, who enjoys making Lilith's life a living hell. No one cares to protect Lilith from her sister, except Asher. and no one cares that Asher is innocent. And that's not the main focus of the book. That's just a backstory. 

Some books are so draining that I put them down, unable to handle it. But, Chaselyn uses the tragedy to make me want to read further.

Sure, this book is draining, yet the character development is so good that I found myself needing to know what happens to Lilith, Asher, Rowan, and the others. This book is a page turner because of this perfect mix of lovable characters, and a draining amount of tragedy. I found myself craving a happy ending the further I read. 

Each depressing backstory added to that craving of a good end. That feeling of wanting those characters to finally be at peace after all they've been through. And putting down the book was not an option when I was already so invested in the characters. 

Chaselyn Roderick has been my favorite author since I read 99% Down, and I hope you take a chance to read one of her books! I am definitely awaiting her next release. 

Find Chaselyn Roderick on Amazon and Facebook using the links below.

This is going to be an interesting review...

Long story short, Hayden Lockhart doesn't exist, and the contents of this book are plagiarized from a mystery box subscription... here's my review of it from last year:

"I found this self published work (printed by KDP) at goodwill. The price on Amazon is $250.00. the cover art has nothing to do with the story, and the author name is the name of the main character. It's merely a collection of journal entries, and places marked to open boxes of evidence, for example: "open evidence #1." After reading this, I'm pretty sure the person who uploaded this to KDP just copied the text using Google lens off of a weekly crime solving subscription like Hunt a Killer. Where journal entries and evidence is sent to you in the mail, and you try to solve it. I think they took the journal entries from a month's subscription, scanned them, extracted the text, typeset it, then uploaded it under the pen name of the main character."

Well, Why is this turning into a whole blog post?

Recently I went back to check on this book, and dug a bit deeper.

I found that there is indeed a mystery box subscription company (named Murder Mystery Box) that sells a mystery box titled... you guessed it, "Death Dealer." And guess who the main character of that mystery box story is? Hayden Lockhart, of course.

Yeah, I was right back in 2021 just by reading the thing.

All it took was a google search now (2022) and I found the proper owners of the story.

From there, I tried to find out where the cover image came from. Obviously the body of the work was stolen, and the title font was chosen to match that of the image used on Murder Mystery Box's product page.

Doing a quick search using google lens, I found another book using that cover. The title of which is:
My Book of Magic: Journal for Spells...

This notebook didn't have a title on the cover, although it's front and back cover art is exactly the same as the Death Dealer by Hayden Lockhart.

I found a tan colored version of the art piece on Overstock.com. The piece is titled "Crow Perching on Tree" by Design Art. 

After finding out that the work was plagiarized from Murder Mystery Box, I wondered "how many more of their mystery boxes are plagiarized?"

So I checked.

On the Murder Mystery Box's website, they have a large list of "one time mystery boxes."  I chose a random one, took the name of it, plus the name of the main character, and searched them on google. Sure enough there it was. Another plagiarized book for sale on Amazon, this time for $390.74!

Sometimes, self publishing allows opportunity for copyright infringement. 

Check out Murder Mystery Box's website and Facebook Pages:

The Phoenix and the Spider was sold to me as a "dark fantasy" but it felt more like a supernatural thriller. Neither of those are genres I prefer, but I did really enjoy this book. So lets get into it!

The world and character building was amazing. Benny Charles & Alex Robinson did a really good job! The characters are graphically realistic. I have loved many characters in books before, but these were so loveable and hateable all at once. The best way to describe her protagonists is that they are heroes with sins. The authors were not afraid to portray the dark sides of their characters, and it gave each person you met a sharp edge. 
The world itself is literally our world, but seen through the eyes of three characters who keep getting reincarnated amidst their mortal combat. Some chapters take place in a modern day city, and others in ancient cultures.
The plot is a series of the lives of three reincarnating characters, the Phoenix, his lover, and the Spider, who likes to call himself "Anasazi."  Each chapter we either see Anasazi kill the phoenix once again, in his attempts to send him to the aether, or the current happening in the lives of Theo and Auryn the modern reincarnations of the phoenix and his lover.
As I read, the chapters skipping between Auryn, some random reincarnation of the Phoenix, and Theo, I felt more and more dread for what I knew would eventually happen. Each chapter about the past always ended with the Spider showing up, and I knew the story of Theo and Auryn would have to cross paths with the Spider eventually.
The authors built very realistic characters, in a very realistic word, and underlined it with thickening dread. 
It was amazing!

No complaints.

My favorite chapter was The Humber Britain, 567 CE chapter. In that chapter the Phoenix lives life as Ingram, and marries a woman named Leila. It of course ends tragically, but I really enjoyed those two characters, and the story in that chapter.

Follow the links bellow to find the authors ​Benny Charles & Alex Robinson on Amazon and Facebook!

Wild & Free, written by Annaliese Hofner takes place in Singanjora forest where our young protagonist, Willow Terez lives life with the Diamond Back wolf pack that adopted her. But when her wolf stepsister has a vision of the future, they prepare for the worst. The vision comes true, and the majority of the wolves are taken to a government facility, leaving Willow behind. 

Based off the acknowledgments, and some Facebook posts, Annaliese wrote the manuscript at a very young age, 10 or 12 years old. Then her father edited it with her. It was self-published when she was 12. Since this book was written by a young writer, for young readers, and since it reminds me so much of the things I wrote at that age, I will offer a review in that context. If this was written by an adult for other adults, it would be a 1-star review. But for her age, and the age range of her readers, this book is easily a 4-star, since I can imagine the author's free-flowing imagination being positively received by her target audience. 

At times this book feels dreamlike. Even the illustrations add to this effect. Her young age and free flowing childhood creativity really adds to the book's dreamlike atmosphere. I will explain this point more at the end of this review. 

Considering this is a children's book, I do not expect long paragraphs of descriptions, since those easily bore young readers. With that in mind, this book, for me, offered a near perfect amount of development.  there wasn't so much that it would bore young readers, but there was enough there for me to visualize what was happening.

For character development, it was of course limited by the shortness of the book, and by the quick pace of the chapters. And honestly, I was okay with the lack of character development. I didn't need any deep understanding of the characters to enjoy this story. We are given some differences between characters, and they do maintain how they act throughout the book, so they are differentiable, but there's nothing deeper than that. 

There were a lot of plot holes, which in some way actually added to the dreamlike feel of the book and made it more enjoyable. I will cover some of these at the end of this review. 

For spelling, I didn't notice any issues. 

As for grammar, there was one small issue that kept showing up. The single quotes in some places throughout the book were replaced with apostrophes. This is not a big deal, but these two markings are visibly different. 

Otherwise, this small book was well checked for typos.

Okay, here's the end of the review, and I have a big point to make concerning the dreamlike feel of Wild & Free. 

Throughout the narrative we have potholes, such as her being raised by wolves from 2 years old till 12, yet she has normal clothes. Where did she get these? did she steal them? 

In chapter 2, the human parents acted unrealistically when they found a wolf by their infant. Instead of snatching the child away, they ran in fear, leaving the child. To clarify, later in the chapter it was explained that the parents didn't like their child. But in reality, neglectful parents wouldn't just run away screaming from a wolf that's approaching their child. As is true in many neglet/abuste cases the parents act responsible and loving except when alone with the victim. In a worst-case scenario, I'd expect the parents to sit and watch the wolf instead of running away. Maybe I got hung up on this point mostly because the two parents were together and had no reason to be afraid of a single wolf. 

Most words like "tent" are replaced with wolfish terms like "fabric cave". Yet "swords" is kept in the story even after being referred to as "hand claws". 

Finally, there was a scene where they come to a hunting camp and find the swords. I had an issue with this not feeling realistic, since why would hunters have swords in a story set in present day where one character has a cell phone? Also, how is our main character, who can only walk on all fours, dual wield two full sized swords at 12-years-old? Hunting knives would have made more sence to find in a campsite and would have been easier to handle. 

Now, why are all these plot issues in the section of things I loved about this book? It feels exactly like the young author's lack of experience is letting her creativity go wherever she wants it, unhindered by what is realistic. Giving it that dreamlike feel. additionally, it's exactly what my early writing was like when I was her age. And these issues which would usually sink any other book, makes this one float. 

Add to the free-flowing creativity the illustrations, which at some times are obviously drawn by a child, add to this feeling. 

To close, I love this book because it reminds me of my childhood, the games I used to play as a kid, and how anything could happen no matter how unrealistic. It feels like a dream. Young readers may find it fun and enjoyable, while older readers, including myself, may find it nostalgic. 

Burning Grudge by Barry Dobey takes place in Bedlington, England, where Don has lived since childhood. But everyone has their enemies. Since a child, Ray Donaldson, had been a thorn in the side of Don and his friends. This feud continued into adulthood, and grew more toxic, especially after the passing of Don's wife and children. Amidst the drama of normal Bedlington life, a virus in Brazil spread through the globe, causing those who die to reanimate and seek anything edible. 

Development is this book's downfall, and the main issue I found with it.

Throughout the story, except one small portion in chapter 8, I lacked any sense of world or character building. The story was skimmed over and told instead of shown. Dobey did describe his character's appearances, and did give basic characteristics, but all the scenes were written in a disengaged voice. This made me feel separate from the story, when as a reader I wanted to see the world as if I were there. 

His characters weren't given scenes to show their emotions or how they individually think, or these scenes were skimmed. Thus the characters suffered similarly due to the presentation of the narrative.

Development is really hard sometimes, and sadly Burning Grudge didn't get the rich storytelling it deserved. 

The dialogue was all grammatically incorrect. Dobey uses single quotes instead of double quotes throughout Burning Grudge. Single quotes are to be used to show a character telling a second party what a third person had said to him.
How single quotes are to be used:
"Richard told me 'every rabbit has a hole, and every bird a nest,' so I'll build us a home!"

He also doesn't separate different character's dialogue into separate paragraphs, instead putting all the dialogue into one paragraph that's difficult to read.

A final issue I found with dialogue. When a character speaks for two or more paragraphs, you should start each paragraph with a quotation, but leave the end of each paragraph open till the character is done speaking, then you add end quotes. Yet, Dobey doesn't start each paragraph with a quotation so it's hard to tell if the character is still speaking or not.

For spelling, I didn't notice any issues.

Random points:

Dobey did make a character (Will Masters) introduce himself twice to another character (Barry). This was redundant, and I wonder if he accidentally forgot to cut one of the introductions out.

Before that we followed Don and Hanna to a farm house, although Dobey accidentally used the name Emma in place of Hanna in one sentence, when Emma's character was currently a distance away at home suffering from some trauma.

Before the zombies arrived on scene, we were presented with this feud between Don and his friends, and the Donaldsons. These first few chapters felt much more interesting to read then the zombie stuff. It still lacked development as did the entire book, but this part of the narrative was more interesting then what came later.

Another part I enjoyed was the end of chapter 8, where we watch the world darken from the perspective of a dying man who then reanimates into a "dead." It is the only place where I saw real development, where Dobey showed me this world instead of telling it to me.

I did accidentally read 15% of the way into the second book before starting this one, and got to see how depraved some character's got. This added a morbid curiosity to push me to keep reading.

If you want to check out Barry Dobey on Facebook or Amazon, check the links below.

This post is merely to formulate a format for future posts, and to give you an idea of what these posts will consist of. 

I will be reviewing other author's work in this blog. After reading a book, especially a lesser-known indie work I will post here, on my Facebook, and my Twitter, from there I will add the review to Goodreads and Amazon.

To keep these short, spoiler free, and to make it less time demanding than I can handle, I will try to keep these short and to the point.

I'd look at how much I enjoy the characters, and how real they feel. Are they distinctly different? 
In terms of world building, how descriptive is the writing, do I feel like I'm there or is it left to my imagination too much? And if it is well described, does it slow down the pace?

With indie books especially, this is a rough one. I myself have had plenty of issues with finding a missing word, or even worse: a misspelling on the back cover. Cringe moment. Here I will, as gently as I can, address this aspect of the books I review. Since I will be targeting Indie books, I'm expecting this section to be loaded. 
(Disclaimer: most indie authors don't have the budget to pay a professional editor).

This is the fun part, especially with masterfully written stories. This section may include spoilers, so I'd indicate that. I might include a quote that stuck with me, anything that I found intriguing, or maybe even something I absolutely loathed. 

I hope to post here soon! I am currently reading a series by an Indie author which doesn't pull punches when it comes to rape and violence in a post-apocalyptic world. The first chapter definitely disturbed me, and hopefully I will be able to add a review to those books to this blog soon!

Here I'll include the author's Facebook and main website links in case you get interested. But make sure you check out my books as well!

Audios!